In word and deed, Hill sabotages his attempt to avoid death penalty

By the standard that justice delayed is justice denied, the opportunity to do justice in the 1985 case of the brutal murder of 12-year-old Raymond Fife passed years ago.
But there may yet be poetic justice, if the judge hearing Hill's latest appeal and the phalanx of appeals court judges and justices that will inevitably consider this case pay attention to Hill's own words.
Hill's latest appeal seeks to overturn the death penalty imposed on him is based on a ruling in June by the Supreme Court of the United States that it is unconstitutional to execute retarded individuals.
The Supreme Court didn't set an IQ level below which a person is determined to be retarded, but an IQ of 70 or lower is used in most states that have established such a standard. Hill's score in 2000 put his IQ at 71. Psychological exams from the 1980s show Hill's IQ ranged from 55 to 68.
Look at the record
Hill is no genius, but he has demonstrated in any number of ways that he is intelligent enough to know what he did was wrong and that he is intelligent enough to work the system. On the very day of Raymond Fife's murder, he was smart enough to wash his clothes in an attempt to destroy evidence. Over the years, he has been smart enough to get along in prison, behaving well enough to be designated an honors inmate on death row, which gets him limited privileges.
And in his appearance in a Trumbull County Common Pleas courtroom last week, Hill argued strenuously, even eloquently, to have the lawyers of his choice carry his appeal. He said this: "I know these two attorneys will help me and defend me better. All I want ... all the attorneys that you appointed on my case put me back on death row. The one attorney sabotaged my case. They hurt me. I don't want to hurt anymore. I didn't do it. I didn't have anything to do with it."
Sabotaged? Well said, Mr. Hill.
Given that the Supreme Court has not set a numerical standard for establishing retardation, the court is obliged to judge Hill on his words and deeds. The record is clear: While Danny Lee Hill doesn't want to die for his crime, the case for him to receive mercy by virtue of retardation has not been made.
Suddenly a sense of compassion
It was galling to hear Hill saying that he doesn't want to be hurt anymore.
When, we wonder, did Hill acquire his finely tuned sense of pain. He certainly didn't exhibit it 17 years ago, when he and an accomplice attacked Raymond Fife. Hill, half-again Raymond's age and twice his size, inflicted far more pain on that boy than society will ever extract from Danny Lee Hill.
It is painful to recount the details of that attack, but it must be done to maintain perspective. Raymond was beaten, brutalized with a pipe, set afire and left in the woods to die. What his tormentors got from that experience, besides the bicycle they stole, only they know.
We know this much. There may be men on Ohio's death row who don't belong there. But Danny Lee Hill is not one of them.
The brutality of his crime against a defenseless boy assures that. The evidence to convict Hill was overwhelming. And now by his own words -- by his brazen ability to sit in a courtroom in front of Raymond Fife's mother and paint himself as a victim -- he affirms that nothing less than the death penalty is appropriate.