GREENFIELD CASE Judge to decide if charges will stand

Defense lawyers argued that some witnesses may be dead or impossible to find.
By STEPHEN SIFF
VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF
WARREN -- The 30-year lapse since the deaths of Gloria Greenfield's children won't make it too much harder for the Niles woman to defend herself for their murder, prosecutors say.
In a motion filed in Trumbull County Common Pleas Court, prosecutors are asking Judge Andrew Logan to reject an argument by Greenfield's lawyers to dismiss the three counts of first-degree murder against her.
Greenfield, 52, is accused of killing her three infant children: Melissa in 1969, Theodore II in 1970 and Regina Woods in 1971.
At the times of their deaths, the coroner ruled the children died of natural causes, but the Trumbull County Coroner's Office changed the causes of death earlier this year: Regina's and Theodore's are now being attributed to asphyxia, and Melissa's is listed as undetermined.
Ruled homicides
All three have been ruled homicides.
Greenfield, of Robbins Avenue, is also accused of trying to kill another daughter, Gloria Bennight, when she was 44 days old and again when she was 80 days old.
Bennight, now 30, called attention to the case when she contacted the coroner's office seeking information about her siblings' deaths.
The public defenders representing Greenfield, attorneys Anthony Consoldane and James Lewis, filed a motion last month arguing that the prosecutor waited too long to file charges.
After three decades, it may be impossible to locate potential witnesses like ambulance crews, neighbors and pathologists. Some may have died, the lawyers said.
Response
Prosecutor Dennis Watkins and assistant prosecutors Sarah Kovoor and Christopher Becker respond the delay was not intentional. It was because of the evolution of forensic pathology and the recognition that some mothers can and will kill their children, the prosecutors said.
They also said defense lawyers failed to show how any missing witnesses could have helped Greenfield.
siff@vindy.com