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Newport Inn triple murder defendant gets 103 years in prison
YOUNGSTOWN
Willie Herring, a defendant in the April 30, 1996, robbery and triple murder at the Newport Inn, escaped the death penalty, but he received a new sentence that will assure he will never again be a free man.
Judge John M. Durkin of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court, who had given Herring the death sentence that the jury recommended in 1998, resentenced Herring on Thursday to 103 years to life in prison for the crimes he committed at the former South Side bar.
“Your choice was walking in that bar. Once you did, all hell broke loose, and three people did die, and two people still carry the scars of that evening,” Judge Durkin told Herring.
“If there’s any rehabilitation, I’m going to ensure that it occurs for you while in prison,” Judge Durkin added.
A new penalty-determination phase had been set for next month after a 4-3 Ohio Supreme Court decision last December vacated Herring’s death sentence but left his conviction intact.
The top court vacated the death sentence because it said Herring’s trial lawyers failed to thoroughly and adequately investigate Herring’s background to determine which mitigating factors to present to the jury during the penalty phase.
The jury in the 1998 trial convicted Herring of three counts of complicity to commit aggravated murder, two counts of attempted aggravated murder and two counts of aggravated robbery, all with firearm specifications.
Calling Herring’s crimes heinous, Ralph Rivera, an assistant county prosecutor, had said in May the prosecution would seek the death penalty this year.
His boss, Mahoning County Prosecutor Paul J. Gains, however, asked that the death penalty be removed from the table and that Herring instead receive maximum consecutive sentences totaling 103 years to life in prison.
That’s because the two surviving shooting victims, Ron Marinelli, the bar owner, and Debbie Aziz, a bar patron, asked him to remove the death penalty to enable them to achieve closure, Gains explained.
Saying Herring was “barely 18” when the crimes occurred, Herring’s public defender, Greg Meyers, said his client didn’t deserve maximum consecutive sentences.
Herring did not address the judge before he imposed sentence at the end of the one hour and 40 minute hearing.
At the end of the hearing, Meyers said no further appeal on Herring’s behalf is planned.
Herring and five others met at Herring’s residence to plan the robbery, and Herring issued guns to three of them, before the masked invaders stormed the bar that was at 179 W. Indianola Ave., shooting and demanding money.
Three bar patrons, Herman Naze, Jimmie Lee Jones and Dennis Kotheimer, were shot to death.
“What you did is unpardonable. You deserve consecutive terms of incarceration,” at the maximum level, Aziz told Herring.
“You are the lowest of the low. You showed no mercy. You deserve no mercy,” she added.
“They were already shooting when they came in. ... It was all shooting with no resistance. Robbery wasn’t the motive,” Marinelli said.
Showing the judge his abdominal scars stemming from the shooting, Marinelli said he exceeded his $1 million lifetime health insurance expense cap because of his injuries from the shooting.
“I’m in pain every day of my life. I have no income. I’m at the poverty level. ... I can’t work,” he added.
“Where’s the restitution? What are you going to do to help him get back what you have taken from him? Have you ever thought about that?” Margo Naze, daughter of Herman Naze, asked Herring in court as she referred to Marinelli’s plight.
“Who said I didn’t?” Herring replied.
“There comes a time in your life that you have to own up to the things, which you have done,” Naze told Herring.
“I pray that you live long enough that you change your life around and that you ask God for His love and mercy, but most of all for His grace,” she added.