Page 1 of 3 123 LastLast
Results 1 to 10 of 27

Thread: James Earl Trimble - Ohio Execution - March 12, 2026

Hybrid View

Previous Post Previous Post   Next Post Next Post
  1. #1
    Guest
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Posts
    5,534

    James Earl Trimble - Ohio Execution - March 12, 2026




    Summary of Offense:

    On January 21, 2005, Trimble murdered his live-in girlfriend, Renee Bauer, and her seven-year-old son, Dakota Bauer, after she threatened to leave him. Trimble fired 13 rounds from his assault rifle into Renee with several others passing through her body and striking her son, Dakota. The next morning, Trimble shot and killed Sarah Positano, a college student from Ontario, Canada, while he held her hostage inside her Kent State University apartment.

  2. #2
    Guest
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Posts
    5,534
    March 12, 2009

    Prosecution tactics in displaying evidence at the 2005 capital murder trial of James Earl Trimble took center stage once again as the Ohio Supreme Court heard arguments challenging his death sentence.

    Under repeated questioning on the issue at the state judicial center in Columbus Tuesday, Portage County Prosecutor Victor V. Vigluicci spent most of his allotted 30 minutes before the high court explaining why he laid out some 20 guns and various bundles of ammunition on two cafeteria-length tables directly in front of the jury box.

    Trimble, who kept the small arsenal of weapons in a locked gun safe in the basement of his home, used only two of the guns in the infamous triple slaying in his wooded neighborhood in Brimfield Township.

    Akron defense lawyers Nathan A. Ray and Lawrence J. Whitney, seeking to reverse Trimble's aggravated murder conviction or reduce his death sentence to life in prison, told the justices that the display of guns had a highly prejudicial effect on the jury, destroying any chance Trimble had of getting a fair trial.

    ''The jury almost could have reached out and touched those weapons,'' Ray told the justices in his opening statement.

    Ray further stressed that Trimble gave authorities detailed statements about his actions before the trial and, in light of his confession, the state simply could have had a witness testify about finding the trove of guns in the basement safe.

    Trimble, 48, is on death row at the Ohio State Penitentiary in Youngstown.

    A jury of seven men and five women convicted him in the fatal shootings of his girlfriend, Renee L. Bauer, 42, and her 7-year-old son, Dakota Robert Bauer, in the home they shared on Sandy Lake Road on the night of Jan. 21, 2005.

    Then, some four hours later after he had fled into the woods, Trimble shot and killed Kent State University student Sarah Positano, 22, after taking her hostage in her duplex apartment off Ranfield Road.

    http://www.ohio.com/news/41060127.html

  3. #3
    SugarSuzane
    Guest
    Wondering if anyone has any updates on James Trimble?

  4. #4
    Guest
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Posts
    5,534
    July 1, 2009

    Ohio Supreme Court affirms death penalty for James Trimble

    The Ohio Supreme Court unanmiously agreed Tuesday to uphold the death penalty against James Trimble, who shot and killed 3 people in Brimfield more than 4 years ago.

    Among Trimble’s 15 allegations of legal and procedural errors — all of which were denied — was that the trial judge should have moved the trial from Ravenna.

    On Jan. 21, 2005, Trimble murdered his girlfriend Renee Bauer, and her 7-year-old son Dakota Bauer in the home they shared.

    Trimble then fled into nearby woods. Shortly thereafter, he broke into the home of Kent State University student Sarah Positano and took her hostage. Trimble then shot 22-year-old student in the neck and killed her after a standoff with the SWAT team.

    Trimble was convicted on 3 counts of aggravated murder — in what was the longest trial in the history of the county — and sentenced to death in November 2005.

    (Source: The Ravenna Record-Courier)

  5. #5
    Guest
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Posts
    5,534
    July 16, 2009

    Positano killer's execution delayed

    The Ohio Supreme Court granted on Tuesday triple murderer James Earl Trimble's motion to delay his scheduled Sept. 29 execution date until all of his state appeals are exhausted.

    Trimble, 48, is on death row in the Ohio State Penitentiary in Youngstown.

    On Oct. 25, 2005, after the longest trial in Portage County history, a jury of seven men and five women convicted Trimble of three counts of aggravated murder in the shooting deaths of his girlfriend, Renee Bauer, her seven-year-old son, Dakota Bauer and 22-year-old Kent State University student Sarah Positano, of Sault Ste. Marie, in January of that year.

    The Ohio Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision on June 30 of this year, denied Trimble's direct appeal of his capital murder convictions and death sentence. That ruling rejected all 15 allegations outlined in Trimble's appeal, including a Portage County judge's decision not to move the trial from Ravenna.

    Appellate attorneys also had argued that jurors might have been influenced by the display of Trimble's firearms in the courtroom and jury room during deliberations. But the court rejected the claim and upheld the jury's recommendation for the death penalty.

    Last week, Trimble's attorneys filed another appeal, setting in motion the process that led to Tuesday's decision to indefinitely delay the execution date.

    A July 7 filing with the Ohio Supreme Court notified the justices that Trimble will file a petition, called a Writ of Certiorari, asking the U. S. Supreme Court to review the lower-court decisions.

    http://beta.saultstar.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=1656745

  6. #6
    Guest
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Posts
    5,534
    July 22, 2009

    Trimble's execution won't happen in fall

    The Ohio Supreme Court issued a stay of execution for James Trimble as he works through the capital punishment appeals process.

    The state's high court pushed back a Sept. 29 scheduled execution date indefinitely pending "all state post-conviction proceedings, including any appeals," according to documents released July 14.

    The move is standard legal procedure in capital cases, where legal proceedings stretch over years.

    About 3 weeks ago, justices affirmed the death sentence for Trimble, who shot and killed 3 people in Portage County in 2005 in what justices called a horrific crime.

    The state's high court rejected all 15 allegations of legal or procedural errors made by Trimble, who sought to have his sentence reduced to life in prison.

    Trimble was convicted of the aggravated murders of his girlfriend and her 7-year-old son (Renee Bauer and Dakota Bauer) and, in a separate home, Kent State University student Sarah Positano. He held the latter hostage and shot her during a standoff with police.

    Trimble's legal counsel sought a stay of execution to allow him to petition the U.S. Supreme Court and complete other legal proceedings before the Ohio Supreme Court.

    (Source: The Aurora Advocate)

  7. #7
    Guest
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Posts
    5,534
    December 4, 2009

    Ohio Supreme Court denies final appeal of death row inmate who killed KSU student----Trimble can still file an appeal in federal court

    Ohio death row inmate James Trimble has exhausted all of his state appeals. According to a filing on the U.S. Supreme Court Web site, Trimble's last petition was denied Monday.

    In January 2005, Trimble went on a shooting rampage in Brimfield Township during which he shot and killed his girlfriend Renee Bauer, 42, her son Dakota Bauer, 7, and Kent State senior Sarah Positano, 22.

    He was convicted on 3 counts of murder and sentenced to death in November 2005 in the Portage County Common Pleas Court in Ravenna.

    Trimble was set to be executed Sept. 29, but the Ohio Supreme Court issued a stay of execution in July because of ongoing appeals.

    Assistant Portage County Prosecutor Pamela Holder said Trimble's next step is a federal appeal.

    "He has exhausted his state appeals, and the only thing left for him is to appeal things in the federal court system," she said. "My guess is he will."

    She said she checked with the federal docket, and nothing has been filed in the Trimble case yet.

    Holder, who sat in on Trimble's 2005 trial, said the execution will not be rescheduled unless there is a lift on the stay.

    "As of today, the stay has not been lifted," Holder said. "The appeal was just denied this week, and I have not seen any paperwork requesting a lift on the stay of execution. As for whether it will be lifted in the future, if there is a federal case pending then no, it will not be lifted."

    Francis Ricciardi, Portage County chief assistant prosecutor, who was one of the prosecutors for the case, said if Trimble decides to appeal to the federal court the outcome will be difficult to predict.

    "In the federal system, you never know what outcome you're going to get." Ricciardi said. "Some of them (the appellate districts) operate differently than others, and so they come out with different rulings."

    Holder said the case could go either way.

    "I would like to say that it's less likely that he'll get anywhere on the federal level, but some of the federal legal issues could be slightly different than the state's legal issues," she said.

    Whatever the outcome, Holder said the process is lengthy.

    "We have 2 other capital defendants in the federal system right now," she said. "These are serious issues, and it's a lengthy process."

    On Jan. 21, 2005, police found the bodies of Bauer and her son Dakota in a home on Sandy Lake Road in Brimfield. They had both been shot several times.

    Trimble ran from police and took refuge in Positano's duplex on Ranfield Road. The Summit Metro SWAT team found her body the following morning. Trimble was found hiding in a closet after holding her hostage and shooting her several times, according to the Brimfield Police Department.

    Positano was a coach's assistant for the gymnastics team. She had been studying physical education and was scheduled to graduate from the university that May.

    (Source: The Associated Press)

  8. #8
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Location
    Germany
    Posts
    13,014
    On January 21, 2010, Trimble filed a habeas petition in Federal District Court.

    http://dockets.justia.com/docket/ohi...v00149/163351/

  9. #9
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Posts
    33,217
    Appeal possible after family loses lawsuit against police chief

    Nearly six years after a Canadian woman attending Kent State University was killed during a SWAT team' standoff with a cornered hostage-taker, the family of the murdered woman, 22-year-old Sarah Positano of Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., has lost the latest round in a $150-million lawsuit against an Ohio police chief alleged to have bungled the showdown.

    But the family's lawyer indicated to Postmedia News on Monday that Positano's grieving parents haven't ruled out appealing the recent ruling by an Ohio appeals court, which found "no evidence" that police mishandled the tragic January 2005 incident or that any other state agencies named in the suit were to blame.

    "(I) hate to speculate," lawyer Michael Callahan said via email about a possible appeal of the Oct. 22 ruling by a three-judge panel of Ohio's 11th District Court of Appeals.

    The long-running lawsuit highlights a classic case of an innocent victim being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

    Positano, an accomplished gymnast just four months away from graduating, was in her condominium unit in the Kent suburb of Brimfield Township when a gun-toting stranger broke into her home and took her hostage.

    James Trimble, 44 at the time, had just murdered his 42-year-old girlfriend, Renee Bauer, and her seven-year-old son, Dakota. The fugitive then rushed from the original crime scene on foot, first hiding in the woods near Positano's building before bursting into the Canadian woman's apartment and holding her at gunpoint.

    Dozens of Ohio police officers rushed to the scene and Brimfield Township police Chief David Blough directed efforts to negotiate Trimble's surrender.

    According to details contained in the court ruling, Positano made a 911 call at 11:18 p.m. on Jan. 21, telling the operator that "a man had entered her apartment" and "was holding a gun to her head and was going to shoot her unless the police left the scene."

    Soon after, Trimble himself spoke to police by phone and "reiterated that he was armed and that he would not hurt Ms. Positano as long as the police retreated."

    One call was disconnected. Then, after police reestablished the phone link with Trimble, one of the negotiators "heard Ms. Positano scream and gasp for several seconds, and then the call was disconnected."

    Trimble had shot Positano in the neck just after midnight on Jan. 22, 2005.

    He was finally apprehended the morning of Jan. 22 after several exchanges of gunshots with police. He has since been tried and convicted of the three killings, and now faces the death penalty.

    But in a lawsuit filed in 2007, Positano's parents claimed that poor police tactics and inadequate training for hostage situations were among the factors that led to their daughter's death.

    "There is a belief that somebody did something — may even have taken a shot — that startled (Trimble) in the midst of the negotiations and caused him to either panic or to do whatever he did when he shot Sarah,'' Callahan told Postmedia News when the suit reached Ohio's civil courts in May 2008.

    "My staff and I are extremely saddened over this," Blough had said earlier in response to the lawsuit. "We constantly think about the Positano family and the unimaginable loss they suffered. I believe their anger and frustration is misdirected toward the police department and other police officers."

    In 2009, an Ohio court ruled against the lawsuit, prompting the appeal to the 11th District Court of Appeals.

    In their decision, the appeal judges acknowledged that because "this hostage standoff came to a tragic and devastating ending," the incident "necessarily and understandably prompted questions and second-guessing based upon hindsight."

    Key to the family's complaint was the contention that legal protections for government employees shouldn't apply to Blough because his handling of the hostage-taking — including an order to fire on Trimble when Positano's fate was still unknown — was "wanton" or "reckless" and should thus disqualify the police chief from immunity.

    "We disagree," the judges ruled. "There is simply no evidence in this record that Chief Blough acted with a wanton and reckless disregard, or even negligently, in trying to save Ms. Positano's life."

    http://www.canada.com/news/Appeal+po...#ixzz15OIuBHpI

  10. #10
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Posts
    33,217
    Related:

    Ohio high court ends Brimfield murder lawsuit: Refuses to hear appeal filed by family of Sarah Positano, who sued township over Trimble case

    By Dave O’Brien
    The Ravenna Record-Courier

    The Ohio Supreme Court recently refused to hear a lawsuit filed by the family of a Kent State University student shot dead in Brimfield in 2005 that sought $150 million in damages against Brimfield Township, its police department and chief of police for failing to prevent her death.

    With its decision, the state high court has effectively thrown out the lawsuit of the estate of Sarah A. Positano v. Brimfield Township, leaving the plaintiffs with no further course of action, their attorney said.

    Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor recently wrote that justices were declining jurisdiction in the case, affirming an October 2010 decision by the 11th District Court of Appeals in Warren, upholding Portage County Common Pleas Judge John Enlow’s dismissal of the case on the grounds that Brimfield has “sovereign immunity” from civil lawsuits.

    Positano, a 22-year-old KSU senior and physical education major from Sault Sainte Marie, Ontario, Canada, was shot and killed Jan. 22, 2005, inside her Ranfield Road duplex by James E. Trimble, a 44-year-old Brimfield man. Prior to that, Trimble had shot and killed his girlfriend, Renee Bauer, 42, and her son, Dakota, 7, with an assault rifle in their Sandy Lake Road home.

    After leaving the house, Trimble shot at responding police officers with an AR-15 assault rifle before barricading himself inside Positano’s Ranfield Road duplex. Hours later, while on the phone with hostage negotiators, Trimble shot Positano in the neck, killing her.

    A SWAT team later entered and arrested Trimble inside Positano’s bedroom. He was found guilty of her murder and other felony charges in October 2005 and sentenced him to death.

    Akron attorney Michael Callahan filed a $150 million lawsuit on Jan. 19, 2007, in Portage County Common Pleas Court alleging that Brimfield Township, Brimfield Police Chief David Blough; Trimble; his mother, Elizabeth; Portage County commissioners; Portage County Job & Family Services and federal probation officials were responsible for Positano’s death.

    Callahan said Friday his only option after the appeals court’s decision was to take the case to the Ohio Supreme Court — a move he said even he considered a longshot because the state high court takes only a small percentage of cases each year.

    As there were no constitutional, appellate or sovereign immunity issues to fight, justices “basically decided there was nothing there in this case,” Callahan said.

    He said he told the Positano family from the start “how difficult winning the lawsuit was going to be.”

    “We’ve always known who the real bad guy is: Trimble,” he said. “But the Positano family felt they were never told the entire truth of what happened that night. They still don’t believe they know the whole truth.

    It was never about money. It was always about finding out what happened,” Callahan said.

    Blough said he knows exactly what happened on Jan. 21-22, 2005, and he and the township’s attorneys opposed any kind of monetary settlement from the start.

    “This lawsuit was wrong from the beginning,” he said.

    Blough said the Positano family would have heard the truth if they had attended Trimble’s trial, and not made a decision to sue after Trimble’s defense attorneys “concocted” a story about a sniper in the residence, he said.

    “That (defense) was just ignorant,” Blough said. There was no “rogue” officer in the duplex that night, he said, also disputing Callahan’s assertion the case wasn’t about money.

    Callahan “needs to sell that snake oil somewhere else,” Blough said. “He wasn’t at the trial ... I know every police officer out there that night. It was the longest 40 hours of my life. No officer ever went in that house.”

    Trimble, now 50, currently is incarcerated at the Ohio State Penitentiary in Youngstown, awaiting execution by lethal injection. The Ohio Supreme Court declined in September 2009 to hear an appeal of his conviction, as did the U.S. Supreme Court in November of that year.

    Blough said he intends to witness Trimble’s execution.

    “The person who is responsible is sitting in Supermax, on death row, waiting to be executed and I’m going to be there when he is,” he said. “This case will be with me until my last breath, not because of anything we did or didn’t do, but because this was a traumatic incident.”

    http://www.recordpub.com/news/article/5038869

Page 1 of 3 123 LastLast

Thread Information

Users Browsing this Thread

There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •