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Thread: Danny Lee Hill - Ohio Execution - July 22, 2026

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    Danny Lee Hill - Ohio Execution - July 22, 2026


    Raymond Fife




    Facts of the Crime:

    On September 10, 1985, Hill and an accomplice, Tim Combs, murdered 12-year-old Raymond Fife in a wooded field in Warren. Raymond was riding his bicycle through the field when Hill and Combs abducted him. Hill and Combs raped Raymond, bit his penis, choked him and burnt his face with lighter fluid. Hill later inquired with police about a $5,000 reward and told them facts that were not disclosed to the public, which eventually led to his confession.

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    September 11, 2010

    Timeline

    5:15 p.m. -- Raymond Fife leaves his Austin Avenue home to meet friend Billy Simmons
    6:00 p.m. -- Fife is discovered missing after not showing up at Simmons' Willow Street house
    8:00 p.m. -- Fife's parents file a missing person's report
    9:25 p.m. -- Fife's father and brother-in-law find him in a field behind Valu-King Supermarket on Palmyra Road

    * Sept. 12, 1985: Raymond Fife dies at St. Joseph's Riverside Hospital. Danny Lee Hill goes to Warren Police Department to inquire about a $5,000 reward offered for tips in Fife's murder.
    * Sept. 16, 1985: Timothy Combs arrested at Western Reserve High School. Danny Lee Hill arrested at Warren Police Department.
    * Jan. 21, 1986: Hill's trial begins.
    * Jan. 31, 1986: Hill found guilty by a jury after five hours of deliberation.
    * Feb. 26, 1986: Hill is sentenced to 10 to 25 years for aggravated arson and kidnapping, life in jail for rape and felonious sexual penetration and the death penalty for aggravated murder.
    * April 21, 1986: Combs' trial begins.
    * May 5, 1986: A jury finds Combs guilty in the crimes.
    * May 12, 1986: Combs sentenced to 46 years to life in prison.
    * Nov. 28, 1989: Hill's death sentence upheld by appeals court.
    * April 1, 1993: U.S. Supreme Court rejects Hill's appeal.
    * 2002: U.S. Supreme Court rules it is cruel and unusual punishment to execute a retarded person.
    * 2006: Hills claims he is mentally retarded and unfit for execution. A Trumbull County judge ruled he was not retarded. Hill appeals.
    * July 2008: 11th District Court of Appeals rules Hill is not mentally retarded.
    * August 2009: Ohio Supreme Court refuses to hear Hill's appeal to 11th District Court of Appeals' decision.
    * March 2010: U.S. District judge denies Hill's motion to halt all challenges to mental retardation claim in federal court.
    * August 2010: Hill asks for a delay in the execution of a fellow death row inmate so the inmate can testify Hill is retarded. Gov. Ted Strickland grants the inmate, Kevin Keith, clemency in a decision unrelated to Hill

    http://www.wkbn.com/content/news/loc...mAwRJ5w4Q.cspx

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    Ohio AG: Danny Lee Hill has no valid claim to seek new trial

    CINCINNATI - The Ohio Attorney General’s office says the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals should deny a request for hiring attorneys to argue that Warren murderer Danny Lee Hill should get a new trial for the 1985 torture and mutilation killing of 12-year-old Raymond Fife.

    The grounds for the request relate to evidence presented at Hill’s trial as to whether bite marks on Fife’s genitals were made by Hill.

    The March 31 request by Hill’s attorneys was filed under seal, meaning the public cannot see it, but the April 10 response from the Ohio Attorney General’s office is accessible to the public.

    It argues that no valid claim relating to bite-mark evidence would give the circuit court reason to allow lawyers to be hired to seek a new trial.

    The attorney general’s office says any suggestion by Hill’s attorneys that it has any newly discovered evidence relating to bite marks is a “gross distortion of the role the bite-mark evidence played at his trial.”

    First, Fife died of heart and lung failure as a result of the injuries he suffered at the hands of Hill and Timothy Combs, including asphyxiation and multiple trauma, the filing says.

    Any new bite-mark evidence “would not absolve [Hill] of murder,” the filing says, noting the other types of lethal trauma the boy suffered.

    The attorney general’s office cites an Ohio Supreme Court summary of the trial that says a state-hired bite expert testified that Hill is the person whose bite marks were on Fife’s body.

    It recounts that a defense-hired bite expert testified that it was inconclusive whether Hill’s teeth caused the bite marks.

    “What I’m saying is either Hill or Combs, or both, could have left some of the marks,” said Dr. Lowell Levine. But he added that at least one bite mark was “most likely” left by Hill.

    Allowing testimony by a new expert regarding bite marks 28 years after Hill’s initial trial in Trumbull County would be “nothing more than a new opinion on an old topic, which does not amount to ‘newly discovered evidence,’” the attorney general’s filing says.

    Ohio law allows a new trial for “consideration only of facts which were in existence at the time of trial, not opinions, which can be formulated at any time,” the filing says.

    Hill, 47, was sentenced to death in 1986 after a trial in Trumbull County Common Pleas Court. Combs is serving a life sentence and was not eligible for the death penalty because he was a juvenile at the time of the crime.

    http://www.vindy.com/news/2014/apr/1...y-new-trial-t/

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    Judge upholds death penalty ruling in Warren murder case

    Convicted killer Danny Lee Hill has lost his latest battle to be taken off of death row.

    Federal Judge John Adams ruled Wednesday that Hill is mentally fit to be executed.

    Hill was convicted in the 1985 brutal murder and rape of 12-year-old Raymond Fife. Fife was walking through a wooded field in Warren when he was attacked and killed by Hill.

    Hill has repeatedly claimed he is mentally disabled and therefore not eligible for the death penalty.

    It is not clear if Hill plans to appeal Adams’ ruling.

    http://wkbn.com/2014/06/26/judge-uph...n-murder-case/
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    On July 28, 2014, Hill filed an appeal before the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.

    http://dockets.justia.com/docket/cir...ts/ca6/14-3734

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    Ariz. attorney asks Trumbull judge to consider new trial for murderer Danny Lee Hill

    WARREN - An Arizona attorney has asked a Trumbull County judge to give a new trial to convicted murderer Danny Lee Hill of Warren on the grounds that bite evidence used at Hill’s murder trial nearly 30 years ago has been discredited.

    Hill was sent to death row in 1986 for killing 12-year-old Raymond Fife of Warren. Hill more recently challenged his death sentence by saying he was mentally retarded, but a visiting judge denied that claim.

    Atty. Sarah R. Kostick of Tucson filed a motion last week with Judge Andrew Logan of Common Pleas Court seeking permission to ask for a new trial.

    The county prosecutor’s office says it will be filing a response to the request in the coming days.

    Miriam Fife, mother of Raymond Fife and a victim-witness advocate for Trumbull County, expressed frustration that defendants and their attorneys are allowed to raise one issue after another to delay execution.

    “It’s just a stall tactic,” Fife said.

    Kostick said she previously worked as an “extern” for the federal public defender’s office for Northern Ohio. That office tried two times but failed earlier this year to convince a federal judge to appoint the public defender’s office to represent Hill in his request for a new trial. Kostick says she is representing Hill pro-bono, meaning for free.

    In her filing, Kostick asked Judge Logan to seek a visiting judge to decide whether to consider a new trial.

    Hill, 47, was convicted of aggravated murder and sentenced to death in the 1985 torture and mutilation killing of Raymond Fife in a wooded area off Palmyra Road Southwest. Hill was 18 at the time, and co-defendant Tim Combs was 17. As a juvenile, Combs was not eligible for the death penalty and got a life prison sentence.

    Kostick wrote in her filing that Trumbull County Prosecutor Dennis Watkins relied heavily during Hill’s trial on testimony relating to bite marks on the genitals of Raymond Fife.

    Some of the evidence came from Dr. Curtis Mertz, a forensic dentist, who compared the marks with dental impressions from the teeth of Hill and Combs and concluded that the marks had come from Hill.

    But a federal public defender secured a report early in 2014 by Dr. Franklin Wright, a Cincinnati dentist who said the marks were not made by a human.

    Kostick wrote that an effort to get a new trial for Hill began after the National Academies of Sciences in recent years “released a report determining that bite mark evidence is unreliable and cannot be validated scientifically.”

    The Ohio Attorney General’s Office argued last spring that Hill’s attorneys were overstating how important bite mark evidence was in Hill’s conviction.

    http://www.vindy.com/news/2014/nov/2...rial-for-hill/

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    Prosecutor: Hill's request for new trial is ‘wholly frivolous’

    The Trumbull County Prosecutor’s office says a request for a new trial by convicted murderer Danny Lee Hill fails to mention certain facts that make it clear there’s no reason to consider Hill’s purported “new evidence.”

    Hill’s filing said he should be allowed to seek a new trial because the National Academy of Sciences now believes bite-mark evidence, such as that used at Hill’s 1985 trial, is unreliable and cannot be validated scientifically.

    But Hill’s own expert witness has testified that Hill’s teeth, which included one that was chipped and turned, caused the marks on 12-year-old murder victim Raymond Fife’s genitals.

    Furthermore, Hill bit a woman on the shoulder and breast while raping her in 1984 when he was 17. He also threatened to do something to the woman’s genitals that turned out to be very similar to what was done to Fife’s genitals, the filing notes.

    Hill also raped another woman in 1984 “on the very path behind the Palmyra Road Valu King from which he abducted Raymond,” the filing says.

    Hill was 18, and co-defendant Timothy Combs was 17 when they killed Fife. Hill received the death penalty. Combs was not eligible for the death penalty because he was a juvenile and instead got a life sentence.

    The filing says questions about whether Hill’s teeth caused an injury to Fife’s genitals are irrelevant because that injury didn’t cause his death.

    “Defendant Hill admitted to Warren police in both audio and video statements that he was with Timothy Combs when [Combs] assaulted Raymond Fife and personally took officers to the field where the assault occurred.”

    Hill never admitted any direct involvement in the murder, but he “did admit that he stayed with the victim while Combs left the area” for a time to get additional items later used to brutalize the boy further, the filing says.

    The prosecutor’s office “views this motion ... as wholly frivolous with absolutely no basis in law or fact,” the filing says.

    http://www.vindy.com/news/2014/nov/2....JuoG2xQP.dpuf
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    Should Warren killer Danny Lee Hill get new trial? Hearing to decide scheduled in Dec.

    WARREN - A visiting judge has scheduled a hearing at 10 a.m. Dec. 21 in the Summit County Courthouse to allow murderer Danny Lee Hill and his attorneys to argue why the judge should give them permission to ask for a new trial.

    Hill will be present for the hearing only through video-conferencing.

    Hill, 48, has been on death row since 1986, when he was convicted of the 1985 rape, torture and murder of Raymond Fife, 12, of Warren. Hill and co-defendant Timothy Combs attacked the boy while he was on his way to a Boy Scouts meeting.

    Hill was sentenced to death. He attempted to be excluded from the death penalty by arguing he was mentally disabled, but a visiting judge ruled against it. Combs, who was a juvenile at the time of the crime, is serving a life prison sentence.

    http://www.vindy.com/news/2015/nov/0...et-new-trial-/

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    I think this is a strong case of a defendant being mentally retarded.

    Hill later inquired with police about a $5,000 reward and told them facts that were not disclosed to the public
    I can't imagine anyone with an IQ above 70 doing something so utterly stupid.

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    Danny Lee Hill wants new trial 30 years after murder of Warren boy scout

    WARREN, Ohio - More than thirty years after a 12-year-old boy scout was tortured, raped and murdered in Warren, the story continues making news headlines.

    The man on Ohio's death row for the crime asked a judge on Monday for permission to file for another trial for the kidnapping, rape and murder of Raymond Fife in 1985.

    The attorney for 48-year-old Danny Lee Hill claims that new evidence has been uncovered that would impact Hill's right to a fair trial.

    Two witnesses took the stand, including a forensic expert specializing in reviewing bites marks-- injuries that were taken into account in Hill's 1986 conviction.

    Dr. Franklin Wright says the criteria for identifying and analyzing bite marks changed in 2013 and should be considered.

    The state questions the timing of the request to take this case back to court and whether or not any further litigation would result in a different outcome.

    "That's what this case is about, giving new testimony about a case that was concluded in the public and the system needs to have some continuity and end to the litigation," Dennis Watkins said, Trumbull County prosecutor.

    After Monday's hearing, a visiting judge said he would rule in ten days on whether or not Hill can file a motion for another trial.

    In 10 days the state can file a request for another hearing, otherwise Presiding Judge Patricia Cosgrove will issue her ruling.

    Background – Caution: Some readers may find some details the following court record account disturbing.

    According to court records, on September 10, 1985, at approximately 5:15 p.m., Raymond Fife left home on his bicycle to visit a friend, Billy Simmons.

    After learning that the twelve-year-old had not arrived at his friend's home by 5:50 p.m., Fife's family began searching for him.

    Raymond Fife's father found his son more than four hours later in a wooded field behind the Valu-King supermarket on Palmyra road.

    The child was naked and appeared to have been severely beaten and his face was burned. Raymond's underwear was found tied around his neck and appeared to have been lit on fire.

    Raymond died in the hospital two days later.

    The coroner, who ruled Raymond's death a homicide, testified during the trial that the victim had been choked and had a hemorrhage in his brain. The coroner also said that Fife sustained several burns, damage to his rectal-bladder area and bite marks on his penis.

    Through testimony from three Warren Western Reserve High School Students, the jury learned that Danny Lee Hill and Timothy Combs were in the area of the Valu-King and the bike trails on the evening Raymond Fife was assaulted. One of the students had also seen Fife riding his bike in the store parking lot.

    A student who said he saw Combs on the trail also said he heard a child's scream. Another student says he saw Combs pulling up the zipper of his blue jeans.

    Two days after Fife was found, Danny Lee Hill, who was 18-years-old at the time, went to the Warren Police Station to inquire about a $5,000 reward that was being offered for information concerning the murder.

    According to Police Sergeant Thomas Stewart, Hill told him that he had just seen some he knew riding Fife's bike. When Stewart asked Hill how he knew the bike belonged to Fife, Hill replied, "I know it is."

    Sergeant Stewart testified that during their conversation, it became apparent that Hill knew a lot about the bike and the underwear that was found around Fife's neck.

    On the following Monday, September 16, Hill went to the police station accompanied by his uncle, Warren Police Detective Morris Hill.

    Police say after waiving his Miranda rights, Danny Lee Hill admitted on audio and video tape that he was present during the beating and sexual assault of Raymond Fife, but that Timothy Combs did everything to the victim.

    Combs was eventually convicted of felonious sexual penetration, arson, rape, kidnapping and aggravated murder.

    Since Combs was 17-years-old at the time of the crime, he was not eligible for the death penalty and is serving a life sentence. He will be eligible for his first parole hearing in 2049.

    Hill was convicted on the same charges, but since he was18-years-old at the time Fife was assaulted, he was sentenced to death.

    Hill has filed several unsuccessful appeals, the most notable of which was a claim that he is mentally retarded and should not be subect to the death penalty.

    http://www.wfmj.com/story/30801596/d...rren-boy-scout

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