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To ask for new trial and acquittal
By joe gorman
youngstown
The man convicted of a 1974 triple homicide last month will be back in Mahoning County Pleas Court on Monday for a hearing seeking either acquittal or a new trial.
James Ferrara was transferred to the county jail earlier this week so he can be present at the hearing before Judge R. Scott Krichbaum, which is set for 8:30 a.m.
Ferrara, was convicted by a jury Nov. 21 of three counts of aggravated murder for the December 1974 murders of Benjamin Marsh, 33, his wife, Marilyn, 32; and their daughter, Heather, 4, inside their South Turner Road in Canfield Township.
A son, Christopher, 1, was left unharmed and found crawling in his mother’s blood by deputies from the Mahoning County Sheriff’s Office and neighbors, who discovered the bodies.
Ferrara was sentenced to three-consecutive life terms by Judge Krichbaum for the murders. He already is serving a sentence for a double- homicide he was convicted of committing in the Columbus area in 1983.
Ferrara did not testify during the trial but at sentencing, he said he never knew Marsh and was never at his home and he denied committing the murders.
Prosecutors used a single fingerprint found on an outside door of the garage at the Marsh home that was collected at the crime scene to link Ferrara to the crime.
He was not charged with the crime until this past summer.
The state Bureau of Criminal Investigation processed the crime scene at the time for the sheriff’s office, and they were able to match that print to Ferrara in 2009.
Prosecutors never offered a motive for the killings during the trial.
Ferrara’s lead attorney, Tony Meranto, had made a motion after prosecutors presented their case asking Judge Krichbaum to dismiss the case based on lack of evidence. That is a motion commonly made by defense attorneys during criminal trials but it was overruled by Judge Krichbaum.
Ferrara also had made motions before the trial asking for a dismissal because the BCI agent who collected the fingerprint in 1974 is dead and could not be cross-examined. Under the U.S. Constitution, defendants in a criminal trial have the right to confront all witnesses against them.
Judge Krichbaum also denied that motion. At the trial prosecutors relied on a former deputy who assisted in the collection of evidence at the crime scene but did not collect the evidence himself and Meranto criticized how the evidence was collected and stored.