Woman stays on Death Row

An assistant prosecutor said Donna Roberts of Howland deserves the death penalty.

By ED RUNYAN

VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF`

WARREN — Donna Roberts cried as she sat in court Monday — not because Judge John M. Stuard had re-sentenced her to death for her part in the murder of her ex-husband in 2001, but because of her mother’s death on Friday at her home in Austintown.

She cried before the sentencing, as her son handed her the newspaper obituary for her mother, Pauline M. Roberts, 85, who was buried earlier Monday.

But when Judge Stuard of Trumbull County Common Pleas Court pronounced her death sentence a second time, she stood with an amused look on her face.

“I told you,” she whispered to her son afterward. She started to comment on the sentencing later when questioned by reporters, but her attorneys advised her to keep quiet.

to be re-sentenced because of an error Judge Stuard made while sentencing her the first time, just after she was convicted of murdering Robert Fingerhut, 57, in 2001.

The error occurred when Judge Stuard asked the county prosecutor’s office to type up his notes and prepare the sentencing order in the case, something the Ohio Supreme Court called a “grievous violation” of the sentencing process.

The Supreme Court also said Judge Stuard should have allowed Roberts to speak to him just before he handed down the death penalty the first time. The court said both mistakes were correctable, and she spoke to Judge Stuard last Monday, saying she never intended for her ex-husband to be killed.

Roberts’ lover, Nate Jackson of Youngstown, was convicted of being the triggerman in the crime.

Prosecutors presented evidence, much of it from letters and phone calls between Roberts, 63, and Jackson, 35, while Jackson was locked up in an Ohio prison. The evidence suggested that Jackson was planning to kill Fingerhut soon after he left prison.

Fingerhut was found dead of gunshot wounds Dec. 12, 2001, in the Fonderlac Drive, Howland, home Roberts shared with Fingerhut about 10 days after Jackson left prison.

Chris Becker, an assistant county prosecutor, said after the re-sentencing that Roberts deserves the death penalty because she provided Jackson with the murder weapon, put him in a position to kill Fingerhut by letting him into Fingerhut’s house and communicated with Jackson in letters and phone calls about the murder.

David L. Doughten of Cleveland, one of Roberts’ attorneys, said Judge Stuard could have changed Roberts’ sentence to life in prison and could have also allowed further testing of his client to determine whether she was mentally ill at the time of the crime.

Doughten said questions about whether Roberts was suffering from mental illness at the time of Fingerhut’s death will likely become the focus of further appeals in Roberts’ case. Roberts asked jurors to give her the death penalty during her trial and refused to offer any mitigating evidence on her behalf. A doctor testified at the time she was competent to make such a decision for herself.

runyan@vindy.com