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Watkins urges state to appeal Lorraine’s death-penalty case
By Marc Kovac
COLUMBUS
Trumbull County Prosecutor Dennis Watkins has asked Gov. John Kasich and Attorney General Mike DeWine to seek a U.S. Supreme Court decision to allow the execution of Charles Lorraine.
Watkins sent a letter to Kasich Saturday, a day after a panel of the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals denied the state’s motion to lift a stay on Lorraine’s lethal injection put into place by federal district Judge Gregory Frost. The judge delayed the execution after the state again failed to follow its own written procedures when putting inmates to death.
“Regrettably, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals has turned a blind eye to this miscarriage of justice and has refused to overturn Frost’s stay,” Watkins wrote.
DeWine said his office is reviewing the decision and determining a next legal move.
“Our work on this continues this weekend,” he told The Vindicator in a phone interview Saturday night. “We’ll have something to announce early next week.”
“We have great concern for the victims’ families in this case and in all capital cases,” DeWine said. “I’m very concerned that the law be followed and executions in this case and other cases be carried out as expeditiously as possible. That is what our concern is, and that is my prime objective. We are still in the process of reviewing how best to achieve these objectives.”
Lorraine received the death penalty for the brutal 1986 murder of Raymond and Doris Montgomery. He stabbed them both multiple times before ransacking their Warren home and using the money and personal items he stole to buy drinks for friends at a bar.
Kasich denied clemency for Lorraine, setting the stage for his execution Wednesday.
But Judge Frost, in a scathing decision the following day, said the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction did not follow its own written procedures for putting inmates to death, even after promising the court that it would. He noted that DRC officials failed to properly document the preparation of execution drugs and control who participated in the November execution of Reginald Brooks, among other issues.
But prosecutors said those issues were minor and should not delay Lorraine’s execution.
In his letter to the governor Saturday, Watkins said state prison officials have taken “unfair hits and suffered a black eye” because of Judge Frost’s decision.
“Allegations that somehow the state of Ohio can’t be trusted to carry out the executions of these savage killers in a humane and constitutionally compliant manner is ludicrous,” Watkins wrote.
He added that the state has successfully taken capital punishment cases before the U.S. Supreme Court in the past. The high court overturned a 6th Circuit decision, allowing the execution of another Trumbull County murderer, Kenneth Biros.
“In my view, the federal courts have wrongly interfered with the right of the state of Ohio to carry out executions in this state,” Watkins wrote. “We have the duty to fight all the way to the Supreme Court the facts of this case, which cry out for justice.”