Trending
WARREN -- Judge Patricia Cosgrove ruled Monday against attorneys for Danny Lee Hill, who again sought a new trial on the grounds that he is intellectually disabled.
Hill and co-defendant Tim Combs tortured, raped and killed Raymond Fife, 12, in Warren in 1985. A three-judge panel in Trumbull County Common Pleas Court ruled that Hill should get the death penalty. Hill's death sentence remains intact with an execution date of July 22, 2026.
Combs died in prison in 2018 while serving multiple life sentences.
Cosgrove, who is retired from Summit County Common Pleas Court, found that none of the reasons given by Hill's attorneys provided a basis for her to rule that Hill should get a hearing on the intellectual disability issue.
Attorneys for Hill argued that a 2019 Ohio Supreme Court ruling in State v. Ford allowed Cosgrove to grant a hearing, but attorneys for the state of Ohio disagreed.
Trumbull County Prosecutor Dennis Watkins said Monday evening that the ruling found "there is no jurisdiction. There is no such thing as a motion to reconsider. This is a successive petition on the same issue of metal retardation. Therefore, this trial court has no jurisdiction.
"Danny Lee Hill has no right to be here. He's already been determined to be guilty, and there is nothing new being presented," Watkins said.
Attorneys for Hill also are fighting his death sentence in federal court with a hearing set for June 14 at the federal appellate court in Cincinnati.
That hearing centers around whether there is new information to determine whether bite-mark evidence was admissible at Hill's trial in 1986.
Watkins said there have been "30-some appeals" fought by the Trumbull County Prosecutor's Office and Ohio Attorney General's Office in Hill's case since his trial.
Another visiting judge ruled against a similar motion filed in 2003, which is why Watkins and Cosgrove call Hill's attempt now to get a new trial "successive petition." Time ran out to file that type of appeal, Cosgrove ruled.
She noted that she is in "a unique position to discuss the evidence of guilt presented by his trial as this court previously reviewed the entire trial transcript before ruling on Hill's motion for a new trial based on bite-mark evidence."
That ruling went against Hill and was affirmed by the 11th District Court of Appeals.
"This trial court found that trial evidence overwhelmingly supported Hill's conviction for aggravated murder with the death penalty specifications (particularly as it applied to the kidnapping charge) even without bite-mark evidence," Cosgrove ruled.
According to the trial evidence that Cosgrove reviewed, the boy was brutalized, but Hill "refused to help the victim as he repeatedly attempted to run or crawl away from the attack. Hill watched over Fife or kept Fife in the secluded wooded area while Combs went to purchase charcoal lighter fluid from a nearby store that was used to set the victim on fire," she stated.
"Though Hill denied ever inflicting any injuries on the boy, he stayed with Fife while Combs went to the store. (Raymond Fife was alive at this point.) After Combs was absent from the scene, a passerby heard continuing screams" from the boy, the ruling noted.
"This court, in denying Hill's motion for a new trial, found there was overwhelming evidence of Hill's guilt on the aggravated murder and the kidnapping death penalty specifications."