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Judge sets September hearing on Danny Lee Hill
By Jordan Cohen
WARREN
The 30-year fight by convicted killer Danny Lee Hill to avoid execution for the torture-slaying of a 12-year- old boy still appears to be far from over.
Visiting Judge Patricia Cosgrove has set a hearing for Sept. 29 in the Trumbull County Courthouse to determine whether Hill should be granted a new trial.
Hill’s attorneys claim that “new evidence” undermines the reliability of bite marks attributed to Hill on the body of Raymond Fife of Warren, who was found dead in a field in 1985. The attorneys claim the marks were the primary reason Hill was convicted.
The child, attacked while on his way to a Boy Scout meeting at a nearby church, was beaten, tortured, sexually assaulted and set on fire.
A three-judge panel in 1986 convicted Hill of aggravated murder with four death-penalty specifications and other counts including rape. His execution had been scheduled for February 1987, but ongoing legal appeals for three decades have tied up the case.
Judge Cosgrove will be asked by the Hill’s lawyers to accept their argument that scientific advances provide other possibilities that would account for the bite marks. Hill had a gap between two teeth, which appeared to match the bite marks on the boy’s penis.
Trumbull County Prosecutor Dennis Watkins, however, has argued in court filings that the bite marks applied only to the rape count and not to the murder. In July, the prosecutor’s office wrote that the reliability of the bite-mark evidence “would have no impact whatsoever” on Hill’s guilt.
The prosecution cited evidence submitted during Hill’s trial that included his admission at the time of his arrest that he watched the killing, which he attributed to a companion, Timothy Combs.
Hill claimed he touched the body only to see if the boy was alive – a contention the panel rejected with its guilty verdict.
Combs, who was 17 at the time, was not eligible for the death penalty because of his age. He ultimately was convicted by a jury in Portage County where his trial had been moved, and is sentenced to life in prison.
Watkins declined to comment Monday when asked about Judge Cosgrove’s decision to have the hearing.