Court tosses death sentence for Ohio man

CINCINNATI (AP) — A federal appeals court on Friday threw out the death sentence of a man convicted of beating and raping a woman and dumping her body in an abandoned building in 1993.

A three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a split decision in the case of Maurice Mason.

The panel by a 2-1 vote held that Mason had poor legal help in the sentencing portion of his 1994 trial in Marion County in the death of Robin Dennis, 19, of Essex.

The appeals court said Mason’s lawyers failed to interview his family and investigate “the obvious red flags” in state records suggesting that Mason’s childhood was pervaded by violence and exposure to drugs in the home from an early age.

Prosecutors have six months to hold a new sentencing hearing, the court said.

The state will review the decision and consider its options, which include asking for a review by the full court, said Jim Gravelle, a spokesman for the Ohio attorney general’s office.

David Stebbins, who represented Mason on appeal, praised the ruling.

“Obviously we have been litigating this for a long time,” he said. “Trial counsel had simply not done an investigation into his background, and his entire childhood was not presented.”

Stebbins said Mason’s parents were drug dealers who sold drugs out of their home, Mason’s father ran a prostitution ring and there was violence in the house — with Mason’s mother once shooting his father in front of their children.