A Superior Court panel has denied a Tamaqua man's request to withdraw his guilty plea to robbery and stand trial.

Roosevelt Warden. 47, of Somerset, argued that he was coerced into pleading guilty when Tamaqua police threatened to have his girlfriend's children taken away if he didn't comply.The court panel said Warden failed to back up his claim of coercion. In fact, in his Aug. 6, 2013, written plea, Warden wrote "I'm guilty of said crimes and want to move on with my life."He also responded that his plea was "given freely and voluntarily, without any force, threats, pressure or intimidation," and that no one had said anything "that would induce him or put pressure on him to plead guilty.""Moreover, he affirmatively stated that he wanted to plead guilty," the panel wrote in its opinion.Warden was charged by Tamaqua police on Nov. 16, 2012, with robbery, unlawful restraint, recklessly endangering another person, simple assault, theft, and receiving stolen property for holding a knife to another man's throat and robbing him at Freddy's Pub.A witness to the crime identified Warden from a lineup of eight men and also identified him at a suppression hearing. She testified at that hearing that she knew him as "Dante" before the incident, and that he was a customer at the pub, where she was a bartender.Warden pleaded guilty to one count of robbery, and was sentenced on Sept. 25, 2013, to three to six years in prison.Warden appealed the sentence on April 4, 2014, under the Post Conviction Relief Act on the grounds that his lawyer was ineffective at a pretrial suppression hearing, resulting in his plea deal. Schuylkill County Judge John Domalakes in May 2014 denied the challenge. Domalakes ruled that Warden had admitted the crime, had said in court that he was satisfied with his lawyer, and that his lawyer had fully explained all the terms of his guilty plea and that he had the right to plead not guilty.