43
AG to appeal ruling in baby's murder
AKRON
The Ohio Attorney General’s Office will appeal a federal judge’s decision that voided the conviction and death sentence of John Drummond in the March 2003 shooting death of 3-month-old Jiyen C. Dent Jr. on Youngstown’s East Side.
In a 113-page opinion released last week in response to a petition for a writ of habeas corpus, U.S. District Judge Sara Lioi ordered Drummond’s aggravated-murder conviction and death sentence be set aside or that a new trial be conducted within 180 days.
Ten shots were fired from an assault rifle into the Dent’s Rutledge Drive residence from across the street, one of them striking the baby in the head as he sat in a baby swing in his living room.
Then Judge Maureen A. Cronin concurred in a sentence of death recommended for Drummond by a Mahoning County Common Pleas Court jury. Drummond, 33, is a death-row inmate at the Ohio State Penitentiary in Youngstown.
The Ohio Attorney General’s Office is appealing Judge Lioi’s decision to the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and the new trial order is stayed pending the outcome of the appeal.
In her decision, Judge Lioi upheld the defense’s request for the writ, based on what she said was Judge Cronin’s improper closure of the courtroom for one afternoon during the trial. This was the only one of 13 grounds for the writ that Judge Lioi upheld.
Judge Lioi ruled the closure violated Drummond’s right to a public trial under the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Over the objection of defense lawyer James Gentile, Judge Cronin ordered all spectators to leave the courtroom and the courthouse because she said some jurors or witnesses felt threatened by some of the courtroom spectators.