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

  1. #11
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    Death row inmate seeks another trial for rape, murder of Warren boy scout

    WARREN, Ohio - The death row inmate convicted more than thirty years ago of torturing, raping and murdering a 12-year-old Warren boy scout is asking for another trial.

    On Monday, attorneys representing Danny Lee Hill filed a motion seeking for another trial in connection with the 1985 kidnapping, rape and murder of Raymond Fife.

    Attorneys for the 49-year-old Hill argue that new evidence was discovered that they say would impact Hill's right to a fair trial.

    During a hearing on Hill's request last year, a forensic expert testified that the criteria used to identify and analyze bite marks has changed since Hill's original trial.

    Evidence presented against Hill included bite marks found on Raymond Fife's body.

    Prosecutors argue that Hill's request is only an attempt to delay his execution, and plan to oppose the granting of another trial.

    Visiting Judge Patricia Cosgrove has scheduled a hearing for June 21, when she is expected to set a date to hear arguments on Hill's petition for a new trial.

    http://www.wfmj.com/story/32213935/d...rren-boy-scout

  2. #12
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    Danny Lee Hill denied new trial

    WARREN, Ohio - A judge has denied a new trial for the man sentenced to death for torturing, raping and murdering a Warren Boy Scout more than 30 years ago.

    On Monday, visiting Judge Patricia Cosgrove rejected Danny Lee Hill's request for a new trial.

    Hill has been on Death Row since his conviction for the 1985 murder of Raymond Fife, who’s mutilated, near lifeless body was found in a Warren field by his father.

    Fife later succumbed to his injuries.

    Defense attorneys had claimed that more modern forensic methods are available to analyze bite marks found on the victim's body that were not in existence during the original trial.

    Hill's public defender argued that the most recent forensic research concluded that bite-mark analysis could not be scientifically validated.

    Prosecutors, lobbied against a new trial, arguing that even if a defense expert would testify that human bite marks were not found on Raymond Fife's body, there is other evidence that Hill or his convicted accomplice Timothy Combs raped the little boy.

    In her decision, Judge Cosgrove cited trial evidence that a passerby could hear Fife continuously screaming for twenty to thirty seconds before seeing Combs on the path were Fife was attacked. The judge points out that Hill admitted being at the scene while the crime was being committed and did not go and get help.

    Judge Cosgrove concluded that the evidence does not create a strong possibility that the outcome of Hill's case would be any different if a new trial were granted.

    The judge found no cause to delay Hill's execution, but noted that her ruling may still be appealed.

    http://www.wfmj.com/story/33305109/d...nied-new-trial
    "There is a point in the history of a society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that among other things it sides even with those who harm it, criminals, and does this quite seriously and honestly. Punishing somehow seems unfair to it, and it is certain that imagining ‘punishment’ and ‘being supposed to punish’ hurts it, arouses fear in it." Friedrich Nietzsche

  3. #13
    Senior Member CnCP Legend CharlesMartel's Avatar
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    Execution of murderer Danny Lee Hill overdue

    Last week was a good one for Ohioans who believe that as long as the state has a death penalty – and as long as there are criminals willing and able to commit heinous crimes – the law should be enforced.

    On a local level, attorneys pursuing a meritless appeal designed only to delay justice in the Danny Lee Hill case were handed a well-deserved defeat.

    On the statewide level, the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction has located supplies of the drugs needed to resume execution by lethal injection.

    There is no good reason why Hill was not executed years ago for the murder of 12-year-old Raymond Fife. The 1985 torture, sexual assault and murder of Raymond was one of the most brutal crimes in Warren history.

    On Sept. 10, 1985, Hill, then 18, and Timothy Combs, then 17, pounced on Raymond as he rode his bicycle through the woods behind a supermarket off Palmyra Road. Over the period of an hour, Raymond was beaten and kicked, his pleas for mercy were ignored, he was sexually assaulted multiple times, he was choked and brutalized with a stick. Hill was left alone with him while Combs went to the store for lighter fluid that was used to set the boy afire. Witnesses reported hearing cries of pain coming from the woods during that time.

    Raymond was left for dead, but he was still breathing when his father, Isaac, found him. He died two days later of injuries so varied and severe that Trumbull County Coroner Dr. Joseph Sudimack Jr. could not pinpoint a single injury as the cause of death. He ruled the death a homicide caused by cardiorespiratory arrest, secondary to asphyxiation, subdural hematoma and multiple trauma.

    At the time, it appeared justice was on track. Hill was found guilty of aggravated murder with four death specifications on Jan. 31, 1986, by a three-judge panel – David F. McLain, Robert A. Nader and Mitchell F. Shaker. He was sentenced to death and an execution date of Feb. 28, 1987, was set.

    And yet, three decades later Hill is still alive, and lawyers who are opposed to the death penalty regardless of the laws of the state, the strength of the evidence or the egregiousness of the crime continue to pursue new and old legal theories to thwart the judicial system.

    Which brings us to last week’s victory for Trumbull County Prosecutor Dennis Watkins, who argued that a motion filed by lawyers on Hill’s behalf seeking a new trial was without merit.

    Hill’s lawyers seized on changes in how the science of bite-mark technology has changed over the past 30 years. They argued that Hill should be given a new trial because an expert testified during his trial that bite marks on Raymond’s penis were likely made by Hill. The lawyers also attempted to claim that Hill’s confession should be suppressed and that Hill should not be subject to the death penalty because, they claim, he is mentally retarded.

    Visiting Judge Patricia Cosgrove bought none of it, but she took none of the claims lightly. She issued a 34-page opinion giving a detailed explanation of why she was rejecting the request for a new trial. To arrive at that opinion, she not only read the voluminous briefs submitted in the case, but she reviewed the entire 1,275-page transcript of the trial.

    She properly rejected attempts to relitigate the confession and mental retardation issues. She then built an unimpeachable argument for why the evidence presented at the trial so strongly supported a guilty verdict that the existence or nonexistence of the bite-mark evidence would not have changed the judges’ verdicts.

    Any other outcome would have been a travesty of justice that would have required Raymond’s family, including his mother, Miriam, to relive a trial that established Hill’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt in 1986.

    That said, it will still be years before Hill can be executed. The lawyers in this case may appeal. And other lawyers are pursuing a federal appeal on the retardation issue – the same issue that was argued unsuccessfully to the Ohio Supreme Court a decade ago.

    Even so, Judge Cosgrove’s ruling must be celebrated for its depth and its clarity.

    Meanwhile, the state hopes to get U.S. District Court Chief Judge Edmund A. Sargus Jr. of Columbus to approve a new protocol that will allow the use of a combination of three drugs in carrying out executions.

    http://www.vindy.com/news/2016/oct/0...-lee-hill-ove/

  4. #14
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    Convicted killer of Warren boy scout to appeal denial of new trial

    Just three weeks after a judge denied a motion for a new trial, a public defender says she will pursue an appeal on behalf of the man sentenced to death for torturing, raping and murdering a Warren Boy Scout more than 30 years ago.

    On Wednesday, Danny Lee Hill's attorney filed a notice with the 11th District Court of appeals that she would challenge the October 3rd decision of visiting Judge Patricia Cosgrove to reject Hill's request for a new trial.

    Defense attorneys had claimed that more modern forensic methods are available to analyze bite marks found on the victim's body that were not in existence during the original trial.

    Hill's public defender argued that the most recent forensic research concluded that bite-mark analysis could not be scientifically validated.

    Prosecutors, lobbied against a new trial, arguing that even if a defense expert would testify that human bite marks were not found on Raymond Fife's body, there is other evidence that Hill or his convicted accomplice Timothy Combs raped the little boy.

    In her denial of Hill's motion for a new trail, Judge Cosgrove cited trial evidence that a passerby could hear Fife continuously screaming for twenty to thirty seconds before seeing Combs on the path were Fife was attacked. The judge points out that Hill admitted being at the scene while the crime was being committed and did not go and get help.

    Judge Cosgrove concluded that the evidence does not create a strong possibility that the outcome of Hill's case would be any different if a new trial were granted.

    The judge found no cause to delay Hill's execution, but noted at the time that her ruling could be appealed.

    Hill has also filed a second and final motion with the 6th circuit appeals court in Cincinnati in regards to his intellect at the time of the attack.

    The claims have since been denied once before, but will be heard once again in November.

    http://www.wfmj.com/story/33494166/c...l-of-new-trial
    "There is a point in the history of a society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that among other things it sides even with those who harm it, criminals, and does this quite seriously and honestly. Punishing somehow seems unfair to it, and it is certain that imagining ‘punishment’ and ‘being supposed to punish’ hurts it, arouses fear in it." Friedrich Nietzsche

  5. #15
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    On November 30, 2016, oral argument will be heard in Hill's appeal before the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. The panel will be made up of Judges Merritt (Carter), Moore (Clinton) and Clay (Clinton).

    http://www.ca6.uscourts.gov/sites/ca...2016_arg_0.pdf

  6. #16
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    Hill defense team asks for disqualification

    Says prosecutor’s office has close relationship with victim’s mother

    WARREN — Attorneys for convicted killer Danny Lee Hill have asked that the Trumbull County’s prosecutor’s office be disqualified to argue the 2016 appeal of a visiting judge who denied the death row inmate’s bid for a new trial.

    Attorneys for Hill, in a motion filed in late February, cited the prosecutor’s office close relationship with the victim’s mother, Miriam Fife, and the fact that Hill’s former trial attorney was hired by the prosecutor’s office in January 2013.

    The defense, in a motion written by assistant Federal Public Defender Vicki Ruth Adams Werneke, is asking a special prosecutor be assigned to the appeal.

    The appeal and motions are before Ohio’s 11th District Court of Appeals.

    Prosecutor Dennis Watkins and his assistant LuWayne Annos, in answering the defense, said the motion is merely a play into the “game plan to forestall Hill’s inevitable execution for even more time.

    “As a pure practical matter, the added expense to transfer this case at this juncture to some unnamed special prosecutor, who would be forced to learn this 31-year-old case, would be astronomical,” Watkins wrote.

    As for former defense attorney James Lewis’ relationship to the case, Watkins wrote Lewis has been divorced from the Hill case for more than three decades and has no dealings with criminal cases in the prosecutor’s office. Lewis retired as a public defender in 2012.

    As for the Fife issue, the defendant’s motion said Mrs. Fife is entitled to feel how she does toward Mr. Hill as she sees him as the person who was responsible for the horrific murder of her son. But those feelings create an intolerable conflict with the Trumbull County Prosecutor’s Office,” which has made it impossible for the prosecutor to review through an objective lens,” the defense motion stated.

    In January 1986, Hill was convicted by the three-judge panel and later sentenced to death for his part in the Sept. 10, 1985, torture, rape and brutal attack on 12-year-old Raymond Fife, who later died from his injuries. Hill’s co-defendant, Timothy Combs, was 17 at the time of the killing and not eligible for the death penalty. Combs was sentenced to life in prison after being convicted by a jury in Portage County.

    Retired Summit County Judge Patricia A. Cosgrove on Oct. 3, 2016, ruled that even though she had serious concerns about the scientific reliability of bite mark evidence, other evidence against the defendant was “more than sufficient to support Hill’s conviction on aggravated murder and three death penalty specifications.” Hill’s lawyers shortly thereafter appealed the decision.

    On June 7, 2016, Cosgrove ruled that Hill’s attorneys could file a motion for a new trial strictly around newly discovered science in investigating bite mark evidence. However in her decision, the judge noted the defense had improperly “expanded the grounds” beyond the bite mark issue to include interrogation techniques used by police, the mental capacity claims and arguments regarding the admission of a stick found at the crime scene.

    http://www.tribtoday.com/news/local-...qualification/

  7. #17
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    In today's opinions, the Sixth Circuit REVERSED the district court’s denial of habeas relief with regard to Hill’s Atkins claim and REMANDED with instructions to grant the petition and to issue the writ of habeas corpus with respect to Hill’s death sentence.

    http://www.opn.ca6.uscourts.gov/opin...8a0024p-06.pdf

  8. #18
    Moderator Dave from Florida's Avatar
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    A liberal panel for sure with Merritt again the author. Ohio is never going to win this one unless the majority of the full court agrees to hear it en banc.

  9. #19
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    Hill was really lucky to get a panel with only Democratic judges, one of whom is a senior judge who wouldn't take part in en banc deliberations. If the Sixth Circuit does take the case en banc, Hill will face a court where Republican appointees outnumber Democratic ones 11 to 5.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United..._Sixth_Circuit

  10. #20
    Senior Member CnCP Legend CharlesMartel's Avatar
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    Federal appeals court panel rules killer Danny Hill no longer eligible for death penalty

    By ED RUNYAN
    The Vindicator

    WARREN - A three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ordered that Danny Lee Hill no longer be eligible for the death penalty for the brutal 1985 murder 12-year-old Raymond Fife.

    The panel, based in Cincinnati, on Friday affirmed Hill’s conviction but reversed the decision of U.S. District Judge John Adams of Akron, who affirmed Hill’s death sentence.

    The federal appellate court said earlier rulings by Ohio courts were wrong when they said Hill, 51, was not too intellectually disabled to be executed.

    Dennis Watkins, Trumbull County prosecutor, said he will request the Ohio Attorney General’s Office to appeal Friday’s decision to a full panel of the judges of the 6th Circuit.

    “Respectfully, as prosecutor for Trumbull County and one of the trial prosecutors ... I strongly disagree with that part of the court’s decision,” Watkins said in a news release Monday.

    Miriam Fife, mother of Raymond Fife and retired longtime county victim-witness advocate, said of the ruling, “I know this is not good news, but I am hopeful the attorney general’s office will appeal it.”

    She noted the long list of judges who affirmed the decision of Visiting Judge Thomas P. Curran, who ruled in 2008 in Trumbull County Common Pleas Court that Hill was not too disabled to be put to death.

    The decision says the 6th Circuit panel found that Ohio courts have unreasonably applied the U.S. Supreme Court’s three-part standard for determining intellectual disability. All three parts must be present for someone to be declared too disabled for the death penalty.

    The ruling says there is agreement Hill’s IQ score of between 48 and 71 means he “easily meets the first element of the clinical definition of intellectual disability.”

    But the federal court also thinks Hill meets the definition of intellectual disability on the two other measurements – adaptive abilities and whether his deficits manifested themselves before he turned 18. Earlier judges disagreed Hill was intellectually disabled in the last two areas.

    The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2002 that execution of mentally retarded criminals violates the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

    Hill was convicted during a 1986 trial before three judges of common pleas court and sentenced to death.

    Hill, then 18, and Timothy Combs, then 17, attacked the boy Sept. 10, 1985, as he rode his bicycle along a path off Palmyra Road Southwest to a Boy Scout meeting. He was beaten, raped and set on fire. He died two days later.

    Fife and Watkins noted another Trumbull County murderer, Jason Getsy, had the death penalty taken away by a panel of the same federal appellate court for the killing of a Hubbard woman in 1995, but the decision was later overturned, and Getsy was executed in 2009.

    http://www.vindy.com/news/2018/feb/0...-panel-rules-/

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