Death-penalty trial nears in ’05 case

By Peter H. Milliken

An orientation for potential jurors is scheduled for Friday.

YOUNGSTOWN — The Mahoning County Courthouse is scheduled for its third capital murder trial in less than four months.

The death-penalty jury trial of Antonio Jackson is to begin next Monday before Judge John M. Durkin of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court.

Jackson, 28, of Summer Street, will go on trial for the Aug. 6, 2005, aggravated murder, aggravated robbery, kidnapping and rape of Sierra Y. Slaton, 19, of Vestal Road.

A co-defendant, Antwon Lanier, 25, of Mahoning County Jail, is charged with committing the same crimes against Slaton. Lanier’s capital jury trial is to begin March 2 before Judge Durkin.

The prosecution alleges Slaton was raped in South Side Park before being taken to McKelvey Lake on the East Side, where she was shot multiple times in the head at point-blank range and thrown into the water.

Slaton was found floating in McKelvey Lake at 6:30 p.m. Aug. 7, 2005.

The death-penalty specifications say Slaton was killed while the other crimes were being committed against her and as part of a pattern of conduct in which two or more people were killed.

An orientation for between 90 and 100 prospective jurors for Jackson’s trial is set for Friday.

Beginning next Monday, prospective jurors will be interviewed by the lawyers and judge individually and out of earshot of other potential jurors until 12 jurors and four alternates are chosen.

If the jury convicts Jackson of any of the death specifications, the same jurors will return at a later date to hear testimony concerning what penalty should be imposed and to recommend a life or death sentence.

Prosecuting the Jackson case are Dawn Cantalamessa and Jennifer McLaughlin, assistant county prosecutors. The defense lawyers are John B. Juhasz and Lynn Maro.

Jackson will face another capital jury trial before Judge Durkin later this year in the Nov. 20, 2005, drowning death of another woman, Tahnee Jackson (no relation), 29, of Cassius Street.

Jackson is charged with aggravated murder in that case, in which the victim’s nude body was found shortly before 4 a.m. floating in a creek in a wooded area near Erie Street and Earle Avenue on the South Side.

Jackson is charged with the aggravated robbery and kidnapping of the murder victim and of a woman who survived that attack.

The same death specifications that were attached in the Slaton case apply against Jackson in the November 2005 case.

Besides these cases, the only other capital case pending here is that of Curtis Young, whose jury trial is to begin in April before Judge Maureen A. Sweeney.

Young, 25, of Center Street, is charged in the July 31, 2007, shooting deaths of Helen Moore, 29, of Cassius Street, her nearly full-term baby and her 8-year-old son, Ceonei Moore.

The death-penalty specifications against Young say that the crimes involved the slaying of two or more people and of two victims under the age of 13.

The forthcoming capital murder trials follow two such trials in which defendants were convicted in October.

One of them resulted in a 310-year prison term for 18-year-old Michael A. Davis, who was spared from the death penalty after being convicted of setting the Jan. 23, 2008, Stewart Avenue house fire that killed six people.

The other capital trial last fall resulted in a death sentence for Bennie Adams, 51, for the Dec. 29, 1985, strangulation of 19-year-old Gina Tenney, whose body was found floating in the Mahoning River. That case was reopened after a DNA match was found in evidence police had preserved for 22 years.

Another capital murder trial was averted in November when Terrance Tate, 23, pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and child endangering and drew a 15-year prison term in the April 2006 beating death of 1-year-old Javonte Covington.