Staff file photo / Guy Vogrin The Fife family gathered in September in Cortland to mark the 35th anniversary of Raymond Fife’s death. Seated, from left, are mother Miriam Fife and sister Paula Lazzari; and standing, sister Yvonne Landis, sister-in-law Debe Fife, sister Regina Manson and brother Michael Fife.

WARREN — Death row inmate Danny Lee Hill and his young victim Raymond Fife were the fifth-biggest newsmakers in Trumbull County during 2020.

The year marked the 35th anniversary of the brutal murder of the 12-year-old Boy Scout as he tried to make his way to meeting a friend on Warren’s southwest side. The murder changed many residents’ idea about feeling safe in Trumbull County.

“(Mother) Miriam (Fife) used to say that Raymond had become everyone’s child,” former Trumbull County assistant Prosecutor LuWayne Annos said. “And here in 2020, that statement remains true.”

Annos has spent many hours in appellate court rooms fighting to keep Hill on death row. From her retirement home in Niles, she saw judges of the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals debate the merits of whether to execute Hill throughout the year.

Three events happened in Danny Lee Hill’s case during 2020:

• The U.S. Supreme Court in January decided not to give Hill a new trial.

• The next month, a three-judge panel from the 6th Circuit later ruled executing Hill would be unconstitutional because he is intellectually disabled.

• After subsequent legal maneuvers by prosecutors through much of the summer, the Ohio Attorney General’s office, led by Solicitor General Ben Flowers, convinced the entire Sixth Circuit to hear the case “en banc” on Dec. 2. For about two hours that wintry day, justices went to Zoom to ask both Flowers and a public defender questions about the different aspects of the “intellectually disabled” defense.

Legal experts, who said this en banc hearing was a rare maneuver, expects the host of judges to render a decision sometime in the spring of 2021.

In the meantime, Raymond Fife’s family saw the 35th summer go by without getting any justice for the slaying of their freckled-faced loved one.

At a late summer gathering at the Cortland home of Raymond’s youngest sister, the family reminisced about the good times with their youngest family member. Raymond’s mother, Miriam, and his four surviving siblings gathered to mark the anniversary of Raymond’s death. They recalled Raymond’s love of baseball, animals, camping and fishing — but perhaps, most of all, his love of practical jokes. His sisters remembered the little snickers the boy emitted after pulling one of his pranks and recall his being “ornery” and being “a bit of a performer.”

Miriam Fife also turned 80 during 2020 and is weary from the fight to see justice for her little boy’s death. But she vows to continue the fight.

During one of her many interviews after a setback in the courts this year, Fife displayed that perseverance.

“I’d like nothing better than to stop this thing that my family has to go through, but we can’t stop now because we’re right,” she said. “We should keep going until we can’t go any further.”