Roberts: Killing not intentional

By ED RUNYAN

VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF

WARREN — Donna Roberts, on death row for conspiring to kill her ex-husband, says she “never intended” for Robert Fingerhut to end up dead when she complained about him to her boyfriend

“It was my imagination. I’m not a bad person,” the 63-year-old Howland woman told Judge John M. Stuard Monday in Trumbull County Common Pleas Court.

Roberts, the only woman on Ohio’s death row, said the communications with boyfriend Nate Jackson before the murder were a product of her creative mind.

“That’s all they were — stories,” she said, explaining that her conversations with Jackson were a lot like writing she did as a youngster. “I never intended for anything like that [the murder] to happen.”

Jackson and Roberts were sentenced to death row in 2002 and 2003, respectively, for killing Fingerhut Dec. 12, 2001, in the Fonderlac Drive, Howland, home Fingerhut shared with Roberts.

Much of the communication between Roberts and Jackson occurred while Jackson was in prison. He was released from prison about 10 days before he killed Fingerhut, who was 57. Jackson, 29 at the time, had been in a romantic relationship with Roberts for about two years.

Roberts was allowed to speak to Judge Stuard on Monday. The Ohio Supreme Court ruled earlier this year that Judge Stuard failed to allow her to speak to the jury before it sentenced her to death in 2003, and that Judge Stuard allowed the prosecution to help him prepare the written portion of her sentencing.

Roberts’ resentencing is scheduled for 1 p.m. Oct. 29.

The first part of Monday’s hearing dealt with whether Roberts was competent to be resentenced.

Dr. Thomas G. Gazley, a psychologist with the Forensic Diagnostic Center in Youngstown, testified she is competent to participate in any court proceedings related to her resentencing. Judge Stuard agreed.

Judge Stuard also refused a request by one of Roberts’ attorneys, David L. Doughten of Cleveland, to allow more time and expense to have a neuropsychologist evaluate whether Roberts suffered brain damage as a result of several car accidents between 1963 and 1999.

Judge Stuard noted that Roberts had refused to allow her attorneys to present any mitigating evidence of this type at her trial, and that this was not a proper time for such evidence.

Nonetheless, Roberts spent much of her half-hour presentation to the judge talking about a 1999 car accident that she said left her “kind of demolished” mentally.

Roberts said she did end up in a psychiatric ward not long afterward. She said medication helped stop the voices she was hearing in her head.

Roberts also talked about having been sexually abused by a cousin when she was a girl. She said a doctor who examined her called her a “bad girl, and that’s what I thought my whole life. Nobody ever paid attention to me or hugged me,” she said.

runyan@vindy.com