43
Appeal heard in 40-year-old triple murder
YOUNGSTOWN
An assistant Mahoning County prosecutor acknowledged that 40-year-old fingerprints on a Canfield garage door constituted “80 to 90 percent” of the prosecution’s case against James Ferrara in the 1974 murders of three members of the Marsh family.
Ralph M. Rivera told a three-judge panel of the 7th District Court of Appeals, however, that a Mahoning County sheriff’s deputy testified in Ferrara’s trial that he saw an Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation agent, who is now deceased, collect the prints at the crime scene Dec. 13, 1974.
Rivera also told the judges Wednesday that a BCI fingerprint expert, who matched them to Ferrara in 2009, testified they were clear prints.
“It takes a mountain of evidence going the other way to reverse a conviction following a unanimous jury verdict,” Rivera told the panel.
“A jury believed that those prints were placed at that house on the day that those three people were murdered,” he added.
Ferrara was convicted in the shooting deaths of Benjamin Marsh, 33, and his wife, Marilyn, 32; and in the beating death of their 4-year-old daughter, Heather, in their South Turner Road home.
Their 1-year-old son, Christopher, was found unharmed nearly a day later.
Atty. J. Gerald Ingram, who argued Ferrara’s appeal, cited a lack of documentation concerning the fingerprints, which had been in long-term storage.
“There is no evidence submission sheet. There is no evidence log. There is no documentary evidence establishing what happened with these fingerprint lifts from 1974 to 2009,” Ingram told the judges.
“There was no dispute that those, in fact, were your client’s prints. ...Your client claims that he had never been to that home, so, golly, how did his prints get there?,” Judge Mary DeGenaro asked Ingram.
Ingram replied that Ferrara’s statement to sheriff’s deputies, given more than 35 years after the Marsh murders, may have resulted from an incorrect memory.
“The prints, at most, would have put him at the house and, maybe, be evidence of burglary. I don’t know how it’s evidence of murder,” Ingram said.
“How is it we convict someone of murder beyond a reasonable doubt based only on 38-year-old fingerprints?,” asked Judge Cheryl Waite.
“You have a statement he’s never been to the house. If that’s true, his fingerprints would not have shown up at the house,” Rivera replied.
The appeals panel, which also included Judge Gene Donofrio, will rule at a later date.
After a jury convicted Ferrara of three counts of aggravated murder in 2013, Judge R. Scott Krichbaum of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court sentenced him to three consecutive life prison terms without parole.
Ferrara, 66, is serving prison time for a 1983 Columbus-area double homicide conviction.
In appealing Ferrara’s conviction and asking for a new trial, Ingram listed what he said were errors in the trial:
Judge Krichbaum allowed fingerprints into evidence without proper authentication.
The judge allowed hearsay ballistic evidence.
A prosecutor improperly commented on Ferrara’s invocation of his right not to testify in the trial.
The evidence was insufficient to convict Ferrara.
Defense counsel failed to object to the ballistic evidence.
However, Rivera argued that the fingerprint evidence was properly admitted and authenticated through the testimony of a sheriff’s deputy and a BCI fingerprint examiner, that the defense had the proper opportunity to cross-examine a BCI firearms examiner, and that the prosecutor’s comment didn’t deprive Ferrara of a fair trial.