Attorneys for Danny Lee Hill argue for new trial

WARREN — A visiting judge is hearing testimony today in the Trumbull County Courthouse relating to whether murderer Danny Lee Hill and his attorneys should be allowed to argue why the judge should give them permission to ask for a new trial.

Hill is present for the hearing only through video-conferencing. Dennis Watkins, Trumbull County prosecutor, and LuWayne Annos, assistant county prosecutor, handled the case for the state.

Hill, 48, has been on death row since 1986, when he was convicted of the 1985 rape, torture and murder of Raymond Fife, 12, of Warren. Hill and co-defendant Timothy Combs attacked the boy while he was on his way to a Boy Scouts meeting.

Hill was sentenced to death. He attempted to be excluded from the death penalty by arguing he was mentally disabled, but a visiting judge ruled against it. Combs, who was a juvenile at the time of the crime, is serving a life prison sentence.

Attorneys Sarah Kostick of Tucson, Ariz., and Vicki Ruth Adams Werneke of the U.S. Public Defender’s Office in Cleveland, who represented Hill in court Monday, filed a 400-page request in Trumbull County Common Pleas Court in 2014 seeking permission to ask for a new trial.

The grounds for the request were that bite-mark evidence used at Hill’s trial has been deemed in recent years unreliable by the National Academies of Sciences.

The Ohio Attorney General’s Office and Trumbull County Prosecutor’s Office have argued that bite-mark evidence was not crucial to the state’s case against Hill.

Judge Andrew Logan of Trumbull County Common Pleas Court voluntarily allowed the Ohio Supreme Court to appoint a visiting judge to handle the matter.

The Supreme Court appointed Judge Patricia A. Cosgrove, a Summit County judge, to the case. Judge Cosgrove issued Friday’s order, which was sent to Hill’s attorneys and the Trumbull County Prosecutor’s Office.

Judge Cosgrove announced at the beginning of the hearing that she would not prevent the Trumbull Prosecutors office to participate in Monday's hearing.