Automatic appeal for condemned Akron double killer

COLUMBUS (AP) — The Ohio Supreme Court has put off a double killer’s execution pending appeals that could take years.

The court approved a procedural defense motion today to delay the execution of 31-year-old Dawud Spaulding of Akron.

The trial judge scheduled the execution for March 3, but death sentences are automatically appealed in Ohio.

Spaulding was sentenced last year for the 2011 shooting rampage that killed his estranged girlfriend and a man and paralyzed the man’s nephew.

His appeal claims his trial attorneys did a poor job by failing to challenge eyewitness testimony and, in one lawyer’s case, missing repeated court sessions.