In vile texts with a cohort, former McGuire Home caretaker Zachary Dinell described the severely disabled residents whom he beat and choked as “less than people.”
The mother of one of those residents recounted his words in addressing Dinell’s sentencing judge on Thursday.
“Dinell wrote that they are ‘less than people,’ but we all know who is less than people in this room,” Karen Pennell told U.S. District Judge J. Nicholas Ranjan. “Zachary Dinell does not deserve mercy.”
And he didn’t get it.
Ranjan imposed the maximum term of 17 years on Dinell, 29, for systematically abusing the helpless, non-verbal residents at the Beaver County facility, recording what he was doing and then sharing the videos with co-worker Tyler Smith.
A plea deal Dinell worked out with federal prosecutors called for a term of 14 to 17 years.
Ranjan described Dinell’s actions as “evil” and said he was particularly struck by the juxtaposition of the smiling images of the residents in family photos and the suffering he saw in the videos Dinell made.
He said no one would leave court happy after the sentencing but hoped his ruling would provide at least a “semblance of justice” for victims’ families who packed the courtroom, some sobbing.
Dinell, dressed in prison orange, sat impassively while family members lit into him as a monster and a predator.
“I know you can’t face me, Zach,” said one mother. “I hope you sleep with one eye open.”
Flanked by U.S. marshals, Dinell stood before the judge and apologized.
“I just want to say I’m accepting full responsibility for what I did,” he said. “I’ll never forgive myself for it. I hate myself for it. I’m really, really sorry.”
Assistant U.S. Attorney Eric Olshan said in court and in sentencing papers that Dinell and Smith preyed on the most helpless members of society and took videos of what they were doing for their own amusement.
“In essence, they were cheering each other on,” he said.
Dinell pleaded guilty in October to federal hate crimes, conspiracy and concealment of material facts.
He had previously been convicted in state court after pleading guilty to 13 counts of neglect of a care-dependent person and related offenses. In 2020, he was sentenced to 10-and-half to 31 years in state prison.
But he later moved to withdraw his plea and the state Superior Court granted the request.
On Thursday, the victim families implored Ranjan to impose the maximum because they saw the federal court as their last hope to put Dinell away for as long as possible.
The federal case focused on motive, which prosecutors said was hatred of the residents placed in their care.
“Dinell and Smith assaulted their victims because they were disabled,” Olshan said in a sentencing memo. “They acknowledged as much in their copious text exchanges. Every person in the United States is entitled to equal respect and dignity under the law without regard to, for example, the color of their skin, what religion they practice, or whether they are disabled.”
Dinell and Smith were indicted last year. Prosecutors said the pair committed numerous violent and humiliating acts against the patients — punching and kicking them, choking them and rubbing caustic substances such as hand sanitizer into their eyes.
They filmed the acts on their phones and then shared the videos with each other while describing their observations in almost gleeful terms.
Their texts to each other are filled with vitriol.
In one, Smith told Dinell that one patient “won’t be satisfied until he gets thrown off the highest point of a steel cage onto concrete to put him outta his misery.”
Dinell said he considered throwing that patient into a dumpster so “they’d take him out with the garbage.”
After the sentencing, marshals shackled Dinell and marched him away to federal prison while the crowd watched in silence.
The case against Smith is pending.
Torsten covers the courts for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, but he's currently on strike. Reach him at jtorsteno@gmail.com.
