Dennis Watkins wants Danny Lee Hill execution date set

Also petitions state high court to find alternative methods for death penalty

WARREN -- Trumbull County Prosecutor Dennis Watkins on Wednesday filed a motion asking the Supreme Court of Ohio to set an execution date for Danny Lee Hill.

Watkins also suggested the high court form a commission, special board, task force or appoint a commissioner to investigate court-ordered executions that have not been undertaken and to recommend procedures to ensure they proceed.

He said this "is not only appropriate, but necessary."

The latest legal move comes in light of the U.S. Supreme Court voting 6-3 not to hear the appeal of a decision by a Sixth Circuit Court that denied relief for Hill from the death penalty because of constitutional considerations that he was intellectually handicapped. The Federal Public Defender's Office late last week had filed with Trumbull County Common Pleas Court to reconsider that issue.

Hill has been on death row for more than 35 years in the murder of 12-year-old Raymond Fife on the southwest side of Warren. The boy was tortured and molested on Sept. 10, 1985, and died two days later.

This week, Watkins asked for a special prosecutor to deal with the reconsideration motion and Wednesday asked Ohio's high court to carry out the death sentence.

The motion includes gruesome details about the death of Fife using court testimony from both the 11th District Court of Appeals in Ohio and the U.S. Supreme Court deliberations, according to Assistant Prosecutor Charles Morrow. The motion also goes into detail on Hill's legal bids to stay out of Ohio's death chamber. Appeals by Hill were denied by the trial court, affirmed by the 11th District Court of Appeals with the Ohio Supreme Court declining to hear the case in November 1995.

The defendant in 2003 tried a second petition for release. Hill asked the courts to vacate his conviction under the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Atkins v. Virginia that made it unconstitutional to execute a person who is intellectually disabled.

The trial court in the form of an 84-page opinion written by the late Judge Thomas P. Curran rejected Hill's Atkins claim concluding he was not intellectually disabled. That ruling has stood through various appeals through the state and federal court system, most recently with a 2021 decision by the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court, appeal of which the Supreme Court declined to hear.

Watkins has noted no execution has been carried out in Ohio since 2018.

"Ohio's death penalty scheme has withstood a myriad of challenges and most recently this court on May 12, 2022, in an unanimous decision … again upheld the constitutionality of Ohio's death penalty," Watkins told the state's high court.

Watkins also noted the court has set execution dates for more than 30 of Ohio's current death row inmates but no execution has been carried out. He said reprieves have been handed out regularly to Ohio's death row inmates, including two Trumbull County convicted murderers -- Stanley Adams and Sean Carter. A third Trumbull County murderer, Charles Lorraine, is the next murderer scheduled to be executed on March 15, 2023.

"However, given current history of granting reprieves, this office is doubtful that this honorable court's established execution date will be honored," Watkins wrote.

Watkins wrote Hill has "forfeited his right to life."

"He (Hill) has earned a fast pass to the execution chamber, if not a ticket to the front of the line," Watkins told the justices in his 19-page motion.

Trumbull County NAACP President Annette McCoy announced the organization's opposition to Watkins' effort to get a date for the execution of Hill.

"As we do sympathize with the family of Raymond Fife for the loss of a family member, the Trumbull County NAACP opposes Watkins' request for execution.

"Whether administered by federal or state government, the death penalty is infected with fundamental flaws, including persistent racial discrimination, and human error," McCoy wrote. "There is no credible evidence that the death penalty deters crime."

At least 189 people that were convicted to death wrongly were exonerated and released, McCoy wrote. Of these persons, 100 are black.

"Racism is inextricable from capital punishment," McCoy wrote. "The death penalty has its roots in slavery, lynchings, white vigilantism and the racial inequities in sentencing persist to this day."

As of Jan. 1, 540 individuals have been executed since the 1976 reinstatement of capital punishment.

"We are calling for an investigation into the prosecutor's office for bias sentencing of minorities in Trumbull County," McCoy wrote.