WARREN — State Senior Assistant Attorney General Stephen E. Maher filed two separate motions last Wednesday in the case of convicted murderer Danny Lee Hill.

In a news release from the Trumbull County Prosecutor’s Office, public information officer Guy Vogrin detailed the motions as Hill’s “most recent efforts to delay justice.”

Hill has been on death row since 1986, following a three-judge panel in Trumbull County finding him guilty of the 1985 kidnapping, rape and murder of 12-year-old Raymond Fife.

In one motion, Maher is asking for an “en banc,” or the full panel of all five judges of the 11th District Court of Appeals to rehear the case.

As for the other motion, Maher is requesting the Appeals Court to “Certify a Conflict,” or advise the Ohio Supreme Court that it believes there is a disagreement on an issue of law between various Ohio Courts of Appeals, thereby requiring a review by the Ohio Supreme Court to clearly state the law in Ohio, the news release stated.

On Dec. 11, a panel of three judges from the 11th District Court released an opinion remanding Hill’s death penalty sentence to the trial court to reconsider whether Hill is entitled to another hearing related to his claimed intellectual disability.

PRIOR CLAIM

In November, the 11th District Court of Appeals heard Hill’s last argument to overturn his death sentence, which was based on his claim of having an intellectual disability.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled it would exempt him from the death penalty.

During the hearing, the argument from Hill’s public defenders largely centered on the recently adopted legal and medical standards, which were not in existence at the time of Hill’s initial claims of mental retardation, according to the prosecutor’s office.

A three-judge panel in Trumbull County Common Pleas Court ruled Hill should get the death penalty. Hill’s death sentence remains intact with an execution date of July 22, 2026.

Since being given the death penalty nearly four decades ago, Hill has sought review three times before the U.S. Supreme Court and his case has come before the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals multiple times.

Hill and co-defendant Tim Combs tortured, raped and killed Raymond in Warren in 1985 as he was heading to a Boy Scout meeting on the southwest side of Warren.

Combs died in prison in 2018 while serving multiple life sentences.

In August, an 11-3 vote of the full Sixth Circuit court reversed Hill’s bid to have his death sentence overturned on the grounds of a “new claim” of an old argument regarding bite mark evidence.

November’s hearing was another constitutional claim that has been repeatedly litigated in state and federal courts, where Hill already has lost.