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WARREN – Trumbull County Prosecutor Dennis Watkins responded to a 418-page motion for a new trial filed earlier this week by attorneys for death row inmate Danny Lee Hill.
Strike the defense motion, Watkins asked visiting Judge Patricia A. Cosgrove in an 11-page document filed Thursday afternoon in Trumbull County Common Pleas Court.
In his motion, Watkins asks Cosgrove to “strike in its entirety” Hill’s motion for a new trial as “it completely exceeds the four corners of this court’s grant of leave to file.”
Watkins’ motion states Hill is “no innocent man. The record and the facts show he will always remain guilty.”
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.
Watkins said the lengthy defense motion has “absolutely nothing to do with bite marks ” detected on the victim’s body. He points to the Dec. 21, 2015, hearing in which the defense presented two witness to explain why Hill was prevented from using newly discovered bite mark evidence, on which Cosgrove based her June 7 ruling.
Cosgrove ruled last week that defense attorney Sarah Kostick and federal public defender Vicki Ruth Adams Werneke can ask for a new trial for Hill because he was “unavoidably prevented” from filing a motion seeking a new proceeding within 120 days of his 1986 conviction.
Watkins wrote the recent defense motion completely fails to comply with Cosgrove’s strict parameters in filing a new trial motion. He points to the defense’s “brazen attempt to taint other heretofore uncontroverted evidence” that was accepted by the original three-judge trial panel and affirmed repeatedly in appeal.
The judge has scheduled a teleconference Tuesday between both sides to argue the case’s latest merits. In his motion, however, Watkins said such a scheduling is premature because the judge had not reviewed the state’s formal response to the new trial motion. Instead, Watkins asks the judge to schedule a hearing on his motion to strike and on the merits of dismissing the defense motion.
Also on Thursday, Watkins filed a second motion asking Cosgrove to set a deadline for the state’s formal response to the 418-page new trial motion.