Prosecutor: Hill's request for new trial is ‘wholly frivolous’

Staff report

WARREN

The Trumbull County Prosecutor’s office says a request for a new trial by convicted murderer Danny Lee Hill fails to mention certain facts that make it clear there’s no reason to consider Hill’s purported “new evidence.”

Hill’s filing said he should be allowed to seek a new trial because the National Academy of Sciences now believes bite-mark evidence, such as that used at Hill’s 1985 trial, is unreliable and cannot be validated scientifically.

But Hill’s own expert witness has testified that Hill’s teeth, which included one that was chipped and turned, caused the marks on 12-year-old murder victim Raymond Fife’s genitals.

Furthermore, Hill bit a woman on the shoulder and breast while raping her in 1984 when he was 17. He also threatened to do something to the woman’s genitals that turned out to be very similar to what was done to Fife’s genitals, the filing notes.

Hill also raped another woman in 1984 “on the very path behind the Palmyra Road Valu King from which he abducted Raymond,” the filing says.

Hill was 18, and co-defendant Timothy Combs was 17 when they killed Fife. Hill received the death penalty. Combs was not eligible for the death penalty because he was a juvenile and instead got a life sentence.

The filing says questions about whether Hill’s teeth caused an injury to Fife’s genitals are irrelevant because that injury didn’t cause his death.

“Defendant Hill admitted to Warren police in both audio and video statements that he was with Timothy Combs when [Combs] assaulted Raymond Fife and personally took officers to the field where the assault occurred.”

Hill never admitted any direct involvement in the murder, but he “did admit that he stayed with the victim while Combs left the area” for a time to get additional items later used to brutalize the boy further, the filing says.

The prosecutor’s office “views this motion ... as wholly frivolous with absolutely no basis in law or fact,” the filing says.