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Thread: Bennie L. Adams - Ohio

  1. #11
    Senior Member CnCP Addict johncocacola's Avatar
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    If O'Neill wasn't on the court he might still be on death row. Redicullous how he refuses to uphold any capital cases just because he's personally opposed yet still thinks he's qualified to be a justice.

  2. #12
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    Adams claims innocence during resentencing for ‘85 murder

    YOUNGSTOWN - All Bennie Adams would say Monday as he was resentenced in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court for the 1985 murder of a Youngstown State University student is that he is innocent.

    But Judge Lou D’Apolito said the evidence from his 2008 trial was “overwhelming” while the sister of victim Gina Tenney said Adams faces a far-worse punishment than any court could ever dole out.

    “Prepare yourself, Mr. Adams,” wrote Gina’s sister, Rhonda Tenney Reed, who could not be present in court Monday. “You will be held accountable by a much higher power than any here on this Earth. And that punishment will be far worse than the one you will receive here today.”

    Adams originally was sentenced to death by former Judge Timothy Franken after he was convicted in 2008 of Tenney’s death.

    Long a suspect, Adams, 60, was charged in the crime after DNA evidence collected at the scene and preserved by the former head of the police department’s Crime Lab, the late Detective Sgt. Joe DeMatteo, was submitted to the state Bureau of Criminal Investigation after former state Attorney General Marc Dann asked police departments to resubmit evidence in cold case homicides. BCI was able to match the DNA at the crime scene to Adams.

    Adams appealed his conviction and the death sentence. The conviction was upheld by the state Supreme Court, but the death sentence was overturned because the high court found there was not enough evidence to convict Adams of aggravated burglary, a factor which was required to make Adams eligible for a death penalty specification.

    Adams was sentenced Monday to life in prison with parole eligibility after 20 years, which was the maximum penalty for aggravated murder at the time Tenney was murdered.

    Tenney’s parents, who attended the original trial, are deceased, but her sister, who lives in Texas, asked that her statement be read into the record, which was done by Assistant Prosecutor Martin Desmond, who prosecuted Adams in 2008.

    In her statement, Tenney Reed said her parents never got over their daughter’s murder, and they visited her grave every day until they were no longer able to do so.

    “Not only did I have my own grief about losing my sister, but I had to watch my parents grieve their youngest child, which broke my heart even further,” Tenney Reed wrote.

    “You have never expressed remorse to my family for taking Gina’s life,” she wrote.

    Adams’ attorney, John Juhasz, said his client was not prepared to make any remarks because the parties were in agreement as to the sentencing, but Adams did address the court briefly.

    “I just want to say again for the record I didn’t kill Gina Tenney,” Adams said.

    Tenney’s body was found Dec. 29, 1985, floating in the Mahoning River by a muskrat trapper under the West Avenue bridge. An autopsy at the time found she was raped and strangled before she was thrown into the river.

    Adams was a suspect at the time because he lived in the same Ohio Avenue duplex as Tenney, who was a student at YSU from Ashtabula County, and Tenney had complained that Adams was harassing her, staring through her window and trying to talk to her. She was preparing to leave just before she was killed.

    Shortly after the crime, a detective found Tenney’s bank card, the keys to her car and apartment, her television and a potholder in Adams’ apartment. Witnesses also testified they had observed Adams attempting to withdraw money using Tenney’s card and driving off in the victim’s vehicle.

    It wasn’t until the DNA evidence linked Adams to the crime that he was indicted. The detective who investigated the case, William Blanchard, was present in the court Monday.

    Adams also served an 18-year prison sentence shortly after Tenney’s death for a rape in an unrelated case.

    http://www.vindy.com/news/2016/jun/0....mXEQhbgw.dpuf

  3. #13
    Moderator Bobsicles's Avatar
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    Parole for 1985 killer is unlikely

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    news@vindy.com

    YOUNGSTOWN — Convicted killer Bennie Adams is closer to being denied parole by the Ohio Adult Parole Authority in the 1985 killing of a 19-year-old Youngstown State University student.

    Gina Tenney of Ashtabula County had lived downstairs from him on Ohio Avenue.

    The parole board heard the case Aug. 26 and issued its decision this week. But the results are going through the “quality assurance review, so they are not finalized yet,” a spokeswoman for the Ohio Department of Corrections said in a Friday email.

    The Mahoning County Prosecutor’s Office had opposed parole, saying Adams’ “terrifying pattern of criminal behavior” demonstrates that setting Adams free now would endanger society.”

    Adams, 65, originally was sentenced to death after being convicted in 2008 in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court of the murder of Tenney. But an appeals court threw out the death penalty, and Adams later was sentenced to life in prison with parole eligibility after 20 years.

    Tenney was a YSU sophomore who complained just before she was killed that Adams was harassing her, staring through her window and trying to talk to her. Adams was convicted of aggravated murder following a trial.

    Tenney’s body was found by a muskrat trapper Dec. 29, 1985, floating in the Mahoning River under the West Avenue bridge. An autopsy at the time found she was raped and strangled before she was thrown into the river.

    Ralph Rivera, assistant chief of the criminal division of the prosecutor’s office, wrote to the parole board that Adams’ “terrifying pattern of criminal behavior in 1985 justifies his continued incarceration.”

    Adams had always been a suspect in Tenney’s murder, but evidence directly tying him to the murder was not obtained until more than 20 years after her death.

    In 2007, the Ohio Attorney General’s Office invited police departments to submit cold-case evidence for DNA testing. The Youngstown Police Department submitted evidence it had retained from the investigation.

    Ohio’s Bureau of Criminal Investigation analyzed those items and concluded that Adams could not be excluded as the source of a DNA found on Tenney or a piece of her clothing.

    Adams was convicted of a separate October 1985 Boardman rape prior to the murder trial. For the rape, he served 18 years and three months in prison. He has served 13 years and 10 months on the murder, according to the Mahoning County Prosecutor’s Office.

    https://www.vindy.com/news/local-new...r-is-unlikely/
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  4. #14
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    Groundwork laid for June hearing of YSU student’s killer

    By Ed Runyun
    The Vindicator

    YOUNGSTOWN — The defense and prosecution have filed briefs in the matter of whether Bennie Adams, 65, should get a new trial in his 2008 conviction in the killing of Gina Tenney.

    Tenney was a 19-year-old Youngstown State University student who lived downstairs from Adams in an Ohio Avenue apartment building. She was killed in December 1985.

    Judge Anthony Donofrio of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court will preside over a two-day hearing in June on the trial question. Mahoning County Common Pleas Court Judge Tim Franken, who died in 2019, presided over Adams’ trial.

    During that trial, Franken ordered the prosecution and defense not to bring up that Adams’ was earlier convicted of rape, kidnapping and aggravated robbery.

    Attorneys for Adams, however, say jurors learned of the earlier convictions before their work on the case was over.

    The jury recommended the death penalty for Adams, and Franken imposed it. But the Ohio Supreme Court later overturned Adams’ death sentence, and former common pleas court Judge Lou D’Apolito sentenced Adams to 20 years to life in prison.

    FEDERAL FILINGS

    In federal filings, defense attorneys argued that jurors were biased against Adams during his 2008 trial by being aware that Adams had been convicted of the earlier kidnapping, rape and aggravated robbery.

    U.S. District Court Judge James S. Gwin ruled that Adams should be granted a hearing — known as a Remmer hearing — to “decide whether knowledge of Adams’ prior conviction sufficiently biased the jurors.” The hearing is set for June 12 and 13 in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court.

    The Gwin ruling cited an affidavit from a male juror in the 2008 trial.

    The juror stated that shortly after the jury recommended that Adams get the death penalty for killing Tenney, another juror approached the male juror at lunch “and said, ‘if it made (the male juror) feel better, Bennie Adams was in prison for rape for 17 years.’

    “After delivering the verdict, most jurors went to dinner together,” the ruling continued. The male juror “says that at dinner, a second juror approached (him) and said that she had been dying to tell (the male juror) that Bennie Adams had been in prison for rape for years.”

    Based on Gwin’s ruling, a hearing was held March 16 before Judge Anthony Donofrio of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court in which the parties discussed whether the burden of proof during the June 12 and 13 hearing will fall on the state or on Adams.

    Donofrio ordered the parties to file briefs on the issue.

    The Adams brief, filed by attorneys Kimberly Rigby and Renee Severyn of the Ohio Public Defender’s Office, argues that in the 1954 Remmer ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court on the issue of juror misconduct, the “evidence is presumed to prejudice (cause harm to) the defendant, and the government bears the burden of rebutting that presumption.”

    But later rulings have suggested that the burden of proof more properly lies with the defendant during such a hearing.

    Adams’ attorneys cited a 2003 Ohio appeals court ruling that states, “A (Remmer) hearing is required to show actual prejudice because juror bias will not be implied. Nevertheless, contact between a juror and a party carries a presumption of actual prejudice and, at the hearing, the State bears the burden of rebutting that presumption by showing that the jurors were not affected.”

    In some juror-misconduct cases, “the relevant facts of the juror misconduct, influence or contamination are already before the court, and the court can directly proceed to the prejudice analysis,” the filing states. But this case “needs additional fact-finding before proceeding to the prejudice analysis.”

    WHAT JURORS KNEW

    Evidence produced so far suggests that “multiple jurors knew about Adams’ prior conviction during all or part of the sentencing phase of his trial,” the filing states. But because Adams later was sentenced to something other than the death penalty, there is no need to address that, the filing states.

    In order to establish the need for Adams to get a new trial, however, “Adams must show that the jurors knew of this extraneous information during the trial phase.”

    If that is shown, then the parties will try to persuade Donofrio that the “bias” or “prejudice” of that information affected the verdict.

    Adams “bears the burden to show that one or more jurors had their perspectives on the case influenced by knowing about Adams’ prior conviction,” it states.

    “If Adams is successful and can prove bias, the remedy would be a new trial,” the filing adds.

    “If it is proven at the upcoming hearing that a juror or jurors knew about Adams’ prior rape conviction, this knowledge has to have had a prejudicial effect,” the filing adds. “Prior to the trial, the judge found that Adams’ prior conviction — and its similarity to the underlying conviction” in the Tenney murder — was “too prejudicial to be admitted” in the Tenney trial, the filing states.

    CHILLING FACTS

    Ralph Rivera and Ed Czopur, county assistant prosecutors, gave a chilling recitation of facts in the Tenney case to start their filing.

    It begins with a break-in at Tenney’s apartment a week before she was killed. She reported to Youngstown police detective William Blanchard that she heard someone at 1 a.m. Dec. 25, 1985, at her door “with the keys, like they were trying to get in.” Nothing more happened.

    She called her boyfriend, who stayed with her several hours that night. After he left, she heard someone at the door again. This time, the person entered her apartment, and Tenney called 911.

    There was no mention of anything else happening that night. Police investigated and found footprints in the snow leading to a Dennick Avenue residence.

    “Less than a week after the break-in, on the morning of Dec. 30, 1985, Tenney’s dead body was discovered in the Mahoning River,” the prosecution filing states.

    When police spoke to Adams later, they found Tenney’s ATM card in a jacket owned by Adams. Friends said Adams had tried to call Tenney late at night, asking her to let him come up to her apartment. She changed her phone number.

    Prosecutors tried Adams in the Tenney murder after Adams completed his prison sentence in the rape and kidnapping case. Advancements in the use of DNA allowed for additional evidence to be presented at the trial that was not available in 1985.

    The new prosecution filing contains 10 pages of history on the case, then provides history on the trial, appeals and 2020 federal habeas corpus (a fundamental right in the Constitution that protects against unlawful and indefinite imprisonment) petition that included the allegations of juror misconduct.

    In a short section at the end, prosecutors cited a 2021 federal court ruling regarding a Miami County, Ohio, jury-misconduct case. The court found that the “burden (of proof) is on the party alleging juror misconduct to establish prejudice.” A new trial can be granted “based on misconduct of the jury that materially affects the defendant’s substantial rights,” the filing states.

    The filing concludes that “the above makes clear the answer to which party holds the burden at the upcoming Remmer hearing. The answer is that it is the defendant’s burden, solely.”

    https://www.vindy.com/news/local-new...udents-killer/
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    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
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  5. #15
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    Judge must decide whether jurors in 2008 murder case knew too much

    By Ed Runyun
    The Vindicator

    YOUNGSTOWN — An unusual hearing in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court on Monday left Judge Anthony Donofrio to decide whether some jurors knew too much about Bennie Adams’ criminal background when they convicted Adams in 2008 in the 1985 murder of Youngstown State University student Gina Tenney. If they did, Adams’ attorney wants Adams to get a new trial.

    On the first day of the hearing, most of the testimony came from jurors who said they and fellow jurors were not aware of Adams’ earlier conviction, but one juror identified three jurors he said made statements indicating they did know — in violation of the warnings from then-Judge Tim Franken not to obtain information about the defendant or the case outside of court.


    Adams, 65, was convicted of killing Tenney, his upstairs neighbor, on Ohio Avenue in 1985, and the jury recommended that Adams get the death penalty, which was later reduced to 20 years to life in prison. Adams did not attend the hearing.


    A federal judge ruled that Donofrio, who oversees the court Franken ran, needed to hold a hearing to determine whether some jurors knew that Adams had been convicted of rape and spent 17 years in prison before the 2008 trial. He also ordered Donofrio to determine when the jurors knew that information.


    By the end of the day Monday, all witnesses had testified, except one who had a medical emergency. It was unclear Monday when the witness will be available, but possibly as soon as today.


    During the early part of the hearing Monday, witness after witness said they never learned anything about Adams’ earlier criminal record until after the trial ended.


    But a male juror testified by videoconference that a female juror approached him after the jury had recommended that Adams get the death penalty and told him she knew something that might make him feel better.


    The male juror had been struggling with whether he wanted to vote for the death penalty. He decided to vote for the death penalty, and the female juror told him that “if it makes you feel better, (Adams) had been in prison on a rape charge,” he said. The conversation took place at lunch, after the jury had decided to vote for death but before the jury announced its death verdict.


    The male juror also testified to being told something similar by another female juror. This conversation took place at a dinner attended by about 10 jurors after they left the courthouse after the trial was complete.


    He described the female juror only by her hair color and age. At the restaurant, she told the male juror Adams had “been in jail for another rape. I don’t know if she said the number of years, but it was lot of years. And she said ‘We were were dying to tell you.”

    He said the female juror was “clearly” indicating “we” included the male jury foreman, who was sitting nearby, listening to the conversation.


    Under cross examination by Ed Czopur, assistant county prosecutor, the male juror agreed that neither the blonde juror nor the jury foreman said anything to him about a prior rape conviction during the trial. And he agreed the jury foreman never said anything at all about a “prior conviction.”


    The blonde juror never indicated when she learned about Adams’ prior rape conviction, the male juror agreed. Likewise, the earlier female juror never said when she learned of Adams’ prior conviction, the male juror agreed.


    The jury foreman, meanwhile, testified that he did not believe anything improper happened. He said he was not aware of Adams’ prior conviction during the trial but said he “didn’t understand why” prosecutors were not allowed to tell jurors about it.


    He said the first time he learned that Adams had a prior rape conviction was when prosecutors told jurors after the trial — including the penalty phase — was over.


    Gregory Meyers of the Ohio Public Defender’s office, who represents Adams, asked the foreman whether he was aware of a female juror telling a male juror about Adams’ earlier conviction.

    “No, sir, not at all, ever,” he said. Then the foreman offered, “It didn’t make any difference anyhow. He was guilty for what he did.”

    Meyers also asked if it was true the Adams case was the foreman’s fifth time as a juror, and he agreed it was, twice on murder cases.

    A blonde female juror testified that in recent months she was contacted by attorneys for the prosecutor’s office and defense in the lead-up to the hearing.

    She said the jurors were being “picked at” by the attorneys. “I was asked did I find something out prior to the conviction or after,” she said.

    Meyers asked her: “Did you know?”

    She said “I didn’t.”

    Myers said, “That he had a prior conviction?”

    “No,” she said.

    She only learned that Adams had a prior conviction “after everything was over,” she said. That happened when a female juror mentioned it to her as the two of them were walking out of the courthouse right after the case was over, she said.

    https://www.vindy.com/news/local-new...knew-too-much/
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

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