Hill and Biros have avoided justice for too long

Hill and Biros have avoided justice for too long

There are some cases in which the death penalty could be a tough call.

But Trumbull County has two men facing execution who have avoided paying for their crimes for decades. And in neither case should there be any question that under Ohio law these men should be executed.

Mercifully for the families that have watched powerlessly from the sidelines, justice may be getting closer for Danny Lee Hill and Kenneth Biros.

The Hill case

The 11th District Court of Appeals has found what anyone who has been following Hill’s case knew from its earliest days: that Danny Lee Hill is not mentally retarded today and wasn’t when he murdered 12-year-old Raymond Fife in Warren in 1985. Based on the suffering inflicted on Raymond Fife, Hill was a brute and sadist and a murderer. But his actions in trying to cover up his crime were sophisticated enough to be beyond the level of someone who was mentally retarded.

This is not to say that Hill is a criminal genius, but he was smart enough in 1985 to realize that killing Fife was wrong and that he should destroy evidence that could be used against him. Over the years, he was smart enough to make various claims that he had been provided ineffective counsel, which allowed him to delay his execution. Four years ago he was smart enough to see that a U.S. Supreme Court ruling barring the execution of retarded persons might save him. And, as Trumbull County Prosecutor Dennis Watkins has shown time and again, Hill has functioned in a prison setting, in interviews and on various tests in ways that clearly contradict his claim of retardation. Watkins and his chief appellate assistant LuWayne Annos found prison records showing Hill researching his own court case, playing bingo and functioning more normally than he claimed he could.

It has been nearly 23 years since Hill murdered Raymond Fife. The Ohio Supreme Court should endorse the appeals court’s findings and clear the way for Hill’s execution.

The Biros case

Any day, the Supreme Court should also be taking action to facilitate the overdue execution of Biros.

Biros came within hours of execution in March 2007, while the Supreme Court of the United States was pondering whether death by lethal injection was cruel and unusual punishment.

Now that the high court has ruled that death by injection does not violate the Eighth Amendment, Watkins office has asked the Ohio Supreme Court to set an execution date for Biros.

Biros murdered and dismembered Tami Engstrom, 22, in February 1991. Like Hill, he has used every claim he has been able to latch onto to avoid justice, including one pending appeal that argues that his crime, depraved as it was, does not rise to the level of a capital crime.

Those tactics have worked for him for 17 years. It is past time for the court put an end to it.

Ohio has history of not being able to administer its capital punishment law in a timely fashion. The clear cut cases of brutal murder against Danny Lee Hill and Kenneth Biros should be used to change that. They should be at the front of the line leading out of death row and into the death chamber.