Extra charges dropped in death-penalty case

By Peter H. Milliken

The case would be the county’s first death penalty trial in 4 1‚Ñ2 years.

YOUNGSTOWN — Judge Timothy E. Franken said he plans to dismiss the nonmurder charges against Bennie L. Adams, who could could face the death penalty if convicted in the Dec. 29, 1985, strangulation death of Gina Tenney.

In a Thursday evidentiary hearing, the Mahoning County Common Pleas judge said he’ll grant a defense motion to dismiss them because the six-year statute of limitations for those charges is long expired.

Adams, 50, of Hollywood Avenue, was indicted last fall on charges of aggravated murder with a death penalty specification, aggravated robbery, aggravated burglary, kidnapping and rape in Tenney’s death after a DNA match was found in evidence police had preserved for 22 years.

The body of Tenney, a 19-year-old Youngstown State University student, who was Adams’ neighbor, was found floating in the Mahoning River near West Avenue on Dec. 30, 1985.

Adams’ trial is to begin Aug. 13. It would be Mahoning County’s first death penalty trial in 41‚Ñ2 years.

The judge has not yet ruled on defense motions to exclude from evidence statements Adams made to his parole officer and to remove the death-penalty specification.

In Thursday’s hearing, court reporter Rita M. Chegar testified she cannot find transcripts of the 1986 trial in which Adams was convicted of robbery, kidnapping and rape before he served 18 years in prison.

She also said she couldn’t find any transcript of a 1986 meeting, in which the grand jury declined to indict Adams on a charge of receiving stolen property in the Tenney case.

Martin P. Desmond, assistant county prosecutor, has said the trial transcript was lost in a courthouse attic fire.

Also testifying was Atty. Gary Van Brocklin, who was county prosecutor in 1986, and who said he had only vague recollections of the Tenney case.

The prosecution seeks to introduce the robbery, kidnapping and rape case into the murder trial to show similarities between Adams’ behavior in that case and his alleged behavior in the Tenney case. The judge hasn’t ruled on that issue yet.

Adams’ defense lawyers are Lou DeFabio and Tony Meranto.