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Trumbull jury recommends death for murderer David Martin
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
For the first time in 11 years, a Trumbull County jury has recommended the death penalty for a convicted killer.
David Martin, 30, of Cleveland, who told U.S. marshals he could accept the death penalty for killing Jeremy Cole and attempting to kill Melissa Putnam in September 2012, will appear again Wednesday to be sentenced by Judge Andrew Logan of Trumbull County Common Pleas Court.
Judge Logan could accept the jury’s recommendation or overrule it and give Martin a life sentence.
Martin stood fairly motionless as the verdict was read.
He killed Cole, 21, of Warren with a shot between the eyes at close range. He shot Putnam, 30, in the back of the head, but the bullet passed through her hand first, and she survived to testify against him.
Chris Becker, an assistant county prosecutor, handled the state’s case.
Putnam told a Vindicator reporter, “I feel blessed to be here to put [Martin] where he is. If I would have died like he thought I would, he would have gotten away with it.”
Putnam testified that Martin killed Cole in one bedroom of her Oak Street Southwest home, then came into the bedroom where she was and fired at the back of her head.
She played dead as Martin left the home, then climbed out the bedroom window and sought help from a neighbor. She knew she’d been shot in the hand but only later realized she had a bullet in the skin at the back of her head.
Martin told U.S. marshals shortly after they arrested him in Tallmadge that he could “accept the needle,” meaning the death penalty, for killing Cole.
The jury of seven women and five men deliberated about four hours after about one hour of mitigation testimony from three people who knew Martin as a child and teenager growing up in the Morris Black housing project on Cleveland’s east side.
Wednesday’s testimony was called the mitigation phase, where jurors hear evidence favorable to the defendant. Jurors then weigh the mitigating evidence against the damning evidence they heard last week, when they convicted Martin of aggravated murder, attempted aggravated murder, aggravated robbery, kidnapping and death-penalty specifications.
Under questioning by one of Martin’s attorneys, Gregory Meyers of the Ohio Public Defender’s Office, Lucretia Norton, 32, and Alegra Martin, 40, both said they played with Martin and his brother, Ben, when they were little, but they had little contact with the boys because they were both in jail so much. They are Martin’s first cousins.
Landon Nicholson, 56, who said he knew the Martin brothers growing up, testified that the Morris Black housing complex was a place where shootings occurred “every day.”
Martin read an unsworn statement to the jurors, meaning prosecutors were not allowed to cross-examine him.
“I take full responsibility for my actions,” Martin said. “I speak today to say I’m wrong for my actions that took the life of Jeremy Cole and wounded another life, which is Melissa Putnam.
“To Wanda Cole, I truly apologize for taking the life of your son. I live with the wrong I have caused to both the Coles and Putnams. I am not about to sit here and cry tears, for I was not crying when I did such crimes. But I am going to say this, I ask to be forgiven.”
There was no testimony from psychiatrists or social workers, only a 586-page report from the Cuyahoga County Children Services agency that Meyers summarized for jurors during his closing arguments.
It contained case notes from social workers documenting the trouble Martin and his brother got into as juveniles, their mother’s murder when Martin was 4, the psychiatric troubles of Martin’s father, the shotgun the boys acquired when Martin was 11, and lack of adult supervision while they lived in what Meyers called the “Morris Black ghetto” on Cleveland’s East Side.
Donna Roberts was the last person sentenced to death in Trumbull County. She got the death sentence in June 2003 for helping plan and carry out the murder of her ex-husband, Robert Fingherhut, in the home in Howland where Roberts and Fingerhut lived.