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WARREN – Attorneys for Danny Lee Hill, convicted in 1986 of brutally raping, torturing and murdering a 12-year-old boy from Warren the year before, on Monday filed a 418-page document asking for a new trial.
The Trumbull County Clerk of Courts Office received the motion late in the afternoon on behalf of Hill by attorney Sarah Kostick and federal public defender Vicki Ruth Adams Werneke.
Visiting Judge Patricia A. Cosgrove on June 7 ruled attorneys for Hill can ask for a new trial because he was “unavoidably prevented” from filing a motion seeking a new proceeding within 120 days of his conviction.
Prosecutor Dennis Watkins was quick to point out the judge’s order does not give Hill a new trial, but only this opportunity to ask for a new trial.
The judge has scheduled a teleconference June 21 between both sides to argue the merits of Hill’s request. It will then be up to the judge to decide whether an evidentiary hearing will be held.
“We are prepared to move forward in the case,” Watkins said. “The state will review its motion and prepare the appropriate response in the form of motions as soon as possible.”
Hill has been on death row since his conviction on aggravated murder charges connected to the brutal attack by two people on Raymond Fife, who on Sept. 10, 1985, while riding his bicycle to a Boy Scout meeting, was beaten, sexually tortured, set afire and left for dead. He was found by his father and another relative, and died two days later.
The defense motion points to four new categories of material evidence, each discovered after Hill’s conviction.
While Fife was bitten, new scientific discoveries show that it is impossible to identify a single biter to the exclusion of all others, which the motion pointed to state’s witness Dr. Curtis Mertz doing at Hill’s trial.
The other categories included that latest expert opinions concluded that the bite mark on the victim did not come from a human; evidence related to a stick allegedly used on the victim; and about the confession Hill gave.
Hill’s defense team during a hearing last December in Trumbull County Common Pleas Court argued before Cosgrove that Hill should be granted the request to seek the new trial based on what they described as new methodology for identifying bite marks left on the boy’s body.
At that hearing, Assistant Prosecutor LuWayne Annos and Watkins argued the “new evidence” Hill’s attorneys claims exists is “merely a forensic opinion” defenders “personally crafted” nearly three decades after Hill was convicted.