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WARREN -- Death row inmate Andre R. Williams had his Atkins appeal partly affirmed by the 11th District Court of Appeals in a decision released this week by the three panel judges.
A subsequent hearing will be in Trumbull County Common Pleas Court for a determination on Williams' intellectual disability status to establish if he's ineligible for the death penalty.
Now-retired Judge W. Wyatt McKay had previously denied Williams relief on the claim that the defendant is intellectually disabled and can't be executed under the 2002 Atkins vs. Virginia decision rendered by the U.S. Supreme Court.
A 51-page decision written by District Judge Mary Jane Trapp and released Monday states that after careful review of the record and pertinent law, the court found, "the trial court abused its discretion in determining Mr. Williams did not prove intellectual function deficits, significant adaptive deficits and the onset of deficits while he was a minor."
"In many instances, the trial court's findings under each prong lack evidentiary support and / or proper legal reasoning. In other instances, the trial court excluded and / or failed to address evidence that supports a finding Mr. Williams is intellectually disabled," Trapp wrote.
According to a news release from the Trumbull County Prosecutor's Office, the other district judges, Matt Lynch and Eugune Lucci, sent the case back to the trial court with specific instructions to reanalyze the case using the most recent governing law and clinical principals of intellectual disability adopted by Ohio and federal precedent.
The release also states that the judges ruled the trial court did not abuse its discretion and denied a motion from William's attorneys to strike testimony and the report of Dr. Thomas Gazley.
Gazley had told the trial court in 2017 that he did not believe Williams could be classified as intellectually disabled.
Trumbull County Prosecutor Dennis Watkins said he has directed his staff to appeal the 11th District Court's decision to the Ohio Supreme Court.
"On Dec. 4, 2023, the 11th District Court of Appeals released an opinion remanding convicted murder Andre 'Kokomo' Williams' death penalty sentence to the trial court to again reconsider the evidence presented in several hearings on his claimed intellectual disability, commonly referred to as an Atkins claim.
"This office will be undertaking an appeal to the Ohio Supreme Court seeking to have the trial court's opinion reinstated. We respectfully disagree with the appellate court's factual and legal analysis. This office believes that the 50-page opinion, rendered by now retired Judge W. Wyatt McKay, who was also the trial judge in the 1989 case against Williams, concluding that the defendant was not intellectually disabled (formerly referred to as "mentally retarded"), thoroughly reviewed the evidence and delivered a well-reasoned, factually supported and legally sufficient opinion," Watkins stated in a news release.
FACTS OF CASE
Williams was sentenced to death in 1989 for a home invasion that left George Melnick, 65, of Warren, dead, and for the beating, blinding and attempted rape of Melnick's wife, Katherine.
On Feb. 17, 1989, Williams and a co-defendant broke into the elderly couple's home on Wick Street SE in Warren. Since the 1990s, Williams has lost a series of appeals to get him off death row.
Co-defendant Christopher W. Daniel was sentenced to 37 to 100 years in prison after he was found guilty in 1989 of involuntary manslaughter, attempted murder, aggravated burglary and aggravated robbery in connection to the attack on the Melnicks.
The two men broke into the couple's home, beating both and robbing them of about $2,000, credit cards and a VCR.
Katherine Melnick was 64 when she was hit with a brick while washing dishes and then was beaten with an ax handle by Daniel, according to Watkins. She was blinded in the attack and spent the rest of her life in a nursing home. She died in 2012.
In July, Daniel was denied parole by the Ohio Parole Authority. His next chance at a parole hearing will be in March 2026.