Wednesday, December 25, 2002
Lawyers say a court of appeals should review all death penalty convictions.
By BOB JACKSON
VINDICATOR COURTHOUSE REPORTER
YOUNGSTOWN -- Two local lawyers are challenging Ohio's death penalty law, saying it is unconstitutional and should be thrown out.
Attorneys John B. Juhasz and Damian Billak represent Lance Lynch, who faces the death penalty if he is convicted in the November 2001 torture and killing of 39-year-old Robert Mahar of New York City.
A Mahoning County grand jury indicted Lynch in March on charges of aggravated murder and kidnapping. He was also indicted in the December 2001 shooting death of 39-year-old Eddie Lenord, but does not face the death penalty on that charge.
Prosecutors say Lynch, 24, of Chicago Avenue, bound Mahar with duct tape, tied him to a pole in his basement and tortured him for hours before killing him. It was all over money Mahar supposedly owed Lynch for drugs, officials said.
Set for trial
The case is set for trial in January before Judge James C. Evans of common pleas court.
In a 40-page motion filed recently, Juhasz and Billak asked Judge Evans to dismiss the death specification against Lynch and to declare the death penalty law in Ohio unconstitutional.
In 1994, Ohio voters approved a constitutional amendment that eliminates review of death penalty cases by a court of appeals and moves them directly to the Ohio Supreme Court. The move was intended to cut down the amount of time death penalty cases linger in court on appeal.
But Juhasz and Billak argue in their motion that eliminating the appellate court review denies death-penalty convicts a stage of due process that all other convicts are afforded. That, they say, singles them out as a "burdened class" under the law.
The motion says that two people could be convicted of aggravated murder under the same section of the law. One of them could be sentenced to death, but the other could receive life in prison if there is enough mitigating evidence to avoid the death penalty.
"There can be no clearer violation of the [constitutional] Equal Protection Clause," the motion says.
A hearing on the matter has not been scheduled.
bjackson@vindy.com