Top court refuses to hear double murder appeal

Staff report

YOUNGSTOWN

The Ohio Supreme Court has refused to hear an appeal from a man serving life in prison without the possibility of parole for an August 2009 double- suffocation murder.

In doing so Wednesday, the top court left intact a 7th District Court of Appeals ruling that affirmed the conviction of Lorenza Barnette, 33, in the deaths of 20-year-old Jaron L. Roland and 19-year-old Darry B. Woods-Burt Jr.

The victims’ bodies were found in a burning car on West Avenue near the Mahoning River. They had been bound with duct tape, and bags had been placed over their heads.

Barnette had faced the death penalty, but the jury that convicted him recommended life without parole, which Judge Maureen A. Sweeney, of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court, imposed on him.

Atty. J. Gerald Ingram filed the appeal, which said Barnette didn’t get a proper trial because defense counsel wasn’t allowed to question a city detective about his departmental discipline or to question another witness about new criminal charges filed against him based on his purported conduct the night before he testified in Barnette’s trial.

Ingram also complained the defense didn’t have the opportunity to cross- examine FBI personnel, whose DNA population-frequency estimates were mentioned in the testimony of state forensic scientists.

Barnette’s co-defendants in the double homicide were Joseph Moreland, 33, who got 14 years in prison in this case, plus three consecutive years in another case; and Kenneth Moncrief, 31, who got 15 years to life in prison.