Judge could rule by January on new Danny Lee Hill trial

WARREN — A visiting judge may rule as early as early January on 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 was was present for the hearing in Trumbull County Common Pleas Court only through video-conferencing. Dennis Watkins, Trumbull County prosecutor, and LuWayne Annos, assistant county prosecutor, handled the case for the state.

Watkins and Annos said there was an unnecessary delay in filing the request -- 8 months from the time an expert wrote a report on bite mark evidence in March 2014 and the time when an attorney made her 400-page request for "leave to file" a request for a new trial based on bite mark evidence.

Hill's attorneys said there were legitimate reasons for the delay, including Hill's distrust of local and state attorneys working for the Ohio Pubic Defender's Office and his limited intellectual ability

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 the request to seek 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 retired former Summit County judge.

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