Execution date sought for Getsy

By Ed Runyan

Getsy and two others were offered $5,000 to kill a business rival in a landscaping business.

WARREN — The Trumbull County Prosecutor’s Office has asked the Ohio Supreme Court to set an execution date for Jason Getsy, a 33-year-old Hubbard man who killed a Hubbard Township woman and wounded her son in a murder-for-hire in 1995.

Getsy’s execution was put on hold in 2007, when his lawyers joined a legal challenge to lethal injection, the state’s method of execution.

Other than that, Getsy has exhausted all state and federal appeals of his execution, said LuWayne Annos, an assistant Trumbull County prosecutor.

In a motion requesting the execution date, the prosecutor’s office says Getsy’s lethal injection argument is frivolous and likely to be rejected — given the fact that the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati rejected the argument when it was used by former Ohio inmate Richard Cooey as a reason to keep him alive.

Cooey was eventually executed by lethal injection late last year.

“There is no indication that the court will decide [Getsy’s] case contrary to the precedent of” Richard Cooey’s case, the prosecutor’s office said.

Annos said the Ohio Attorney General’s Office had asked prosecutors to be selective in asking for execution dates for their convicted murderers because of questions that arose in recent years over whether lethal injection was a humane method of execution.

The attorney general’s office has since notified the prosecutor’s office that it is OK to move forward with execution dates, Annos said.

The motion seeking an execution date was filed Wednesday.

Getsy was convicted of aggravated murder in the slaying of Ann Serafino, 68, of Hubbard, and attempted murder for wounding her son, Charles Serafino, in the same attack.

Prosecutors said John Santine offered Getsy and two others $5,000 to kill Charles Serafino, a business rival, and any witnesses because of a dispute over Serafino’s landscaping business.

Ann Serafino was killed because she was home when the gunmen attacked their Hubbard Township home, authorities said.

Santine was sentenced to life in prison.

runyan@vindy.com