Killer loses appeal in 11th District Court

Jackson's lawyer failed to sustantiate most of the claims in his petition.
By ED RUNYAN
VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF
WARREN -- A Youngstown man convicted of murdering a Howland man in 2001 and sentenced to death has lost his battle in the 11th District Court of Appeals over his postconviction relief petition in Trumbull County Common Pleas Court.
Nathaniel Jackson, who along with Donna Roberts was convicted of killing Robert Fingerhut two days after Jackson was released from prison, had sought the reversal of Judge John Stuard's decision to dismiss Jackson's petition.
The court ruled that Jackson failed to demonstrate any reversible error.
In January, the Ohio Supreme Court upheld Jackson's conviction and death sentence in the same crime.
Donna Roberts, ex-wife of Fingerhut and one of two women on Ohio's death row, is appealing her death sentence in the Ohio Supreme Court for her role in the murder.
Court documents say Jackson and Roberts began an affair during Jackson's incarceration in the Lorain Correctional Institution and developed a plan to kill Fingerhut. Documents say the two planned to collect on Fingerhut's insurance policies totaling $550,000.
The plan was to take Fingerhut from his home and kill him at another location, but the plan went awry when Fingerhut fought back. Jackson, of Youngstown, shot and killed Fingerhut in the home Fingerhut still shared with Roberts.
What was missing
LuWayne Annos, assistant Trumbull County prosecutor, said a post-conviction appeal is different from the Supreme Court appeal in that the post-conviction appeal relies on evidence outside the record of the trial.
Annos said this case suggests a problem with this type of appeal.
"They raised issues that were totally baseless, totally groundless and totally without facts at all," Annos said. "That's not the way post-conviction procedure is supposed to work. You are supposed to have the facts in there. You are not supposed to use the filing to get post-trial discovery."
Among the issues Jackson raised in the appeal were that he was not satisfied with his legal representation, that the grand jury that indicted him was underrepresented by blacks, that lethal injection as a punishment in Ohio is constitutionally infirm, that Roberts was offered a better plea bargain, that there was discrimination in the selection of the jury foreman during his trial, that his lawyer failed to retain a competent mitigation specialist, that his lawyer failed to develop information on Roberts' role in the homicide, and that his lawyer failed to investigate the power and control Roberts had over him.
On most of the issues, the appeals court ruled that Jackson's lawyers failed to present any evidence to the court to substantiate the claim.