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Capital sentence off the table for Bennie Adams in Gina Tenney death
By Marc Kovac
COLUMBUS
The Ohio Supreme Court has removed the death sentence of a Mahoning County man convicted in a 1985 murder of a Youngstown State University student.
In a decision announced Thursday, the state’s high court affirmed Bennie Adams’ aggravated murder conviction in the death of Gina Tenney but not a related aggravated burglary element, taking the capital sentence and death penalty off the table.
“We must vacate Adams’ sentence of death and remand the case to the trial court for a new sentencing hearing,” Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor wrote in the majority decision.
“When an appellate court reviews the sufficiency of the evidence to support a capital specification and determines that the evidence is, as a matter of law, insufficient to support a death sentence and vacates the death sentence, the state is barred by the double jeopardy clause of the United States Constitution from seeking the death penalty on remand.”
If this decision stands, the case would go to Judge Lou A. D’Apolito of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court for resentencing, with the only legally available sentence being 20 years to life in prison based on the law that was in effect in 1985, said Ralph Rivera, an assistant Mahoning County prosecutor. Judge D’Apolito succeeded Judge Timothy E. Franken, who imposed the death sentence on Adams in October 2008.
The prosecutor’s office has not decided whether to ask the state’s top court to reconsider or to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, Rivera said.
“Regardless of what the sentence is, Bennie Adams is going to die in prison, where he belongs,” said Martin P. Desmond, the assistant county prosecutor, who prosecuted the case. Desmond said he’s glad the conviction was upheld, but somewhat disappointed that the death sentence was vacated.
Tenney was in her second year at YSU when a muskrat trapper found her lifeless body floating in the Mahoning River in late December 1985. A coroner determined the 19-year-old had been raped, tied up, smothered and strangled and was dead before being dumped in the water.
Tenney lived in an upstairs apartment in a duplex on Ohio Avenue; Adams lived in the downstairs apartment. Tenney told friends she was scared of Adams, who stared through his window and tried to strike up conversations.
Shortly after the crime, a detective found Tenney’s bank card, the keys to her car and apartment, her television and a potholder in Adams’ apartment. Witnesses also testified they had observed Adams attempting to withdraw money using Tenney’s card and driving off in the victim’s vehicle.
Despite the evidence and testimony, the case stretched out over two decades until DNA evidence could be properly tested, tying Adams to the crime. He was convicted of aggravated murder and sentenced to death after serving 18 years for rape in a separate crime.