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Slaying suspect likely won’t face death
YOUNGSTOWN
The Mahoning County Prosecutor’s office has filed a motion to dismiss the death-penalty specifications against David N. Hackett, 53, of New York Avenue, who is to go on trial April 11 in the Oct. 13, 2013, slaying of Collena Carpenter.
Hackett is charged with aggravated murder, rape and two counts of kidnapping, all with Carpenter listed as the victim, with repeat violent-offender specifications to the rape and kidnapping counts.
The body of Carpenter, 30, of Homeworth in Columbiana County, was found near an access road to the Mahoning River near West Avenue. She had been stabbed several times.
“We don’t want anything standing in our way to go on trial” as scheduled in April, said Dawn Cantalamessa, an assistant county prosecutor, who filed the motion Friday, adding that the victim’s family wants the case to be resolved soon.
With the death-penalty specifications removed, Hackett, who is represented by Attys. Lou DeFabio and Lynn Maro, will not need two defense lawyers, and DeFabio can be the lone defense lawyer, Cantalamessa noted.
Maro’s time will be consumed as Mayor John A. McNally’s defense lawyer in the Oakhill Renaissance Place criminal-corruption trial in Cleveland, Cantalamessa added. The Oakhill trial is set to begin Feb. 29 and is expected to last several weeks.
The jury trial of Hackett before Judge John M. Durkin of common pleas court is likely to last less than a week without the death-penalty specifications, the prosecutor added.
Removing the death-penalty specifications also eliminates the expenses associated with having the jurors return for a penalty-determination phase if they convict Hackett of any of the specifications, the prosecutor said.
The death specifications allege that Hackett killed Carpenter to avoid prosecution for another offense, that he killed her while committing rape and kidnapping offenses against her and that he was convicted of a previous aggravated murder in a 1979 case.
In the 1979 case, Hackett was convicted in the shotgun slaying of Joseph Beneski, 42, on the city’s North Side.
If Hackett is convicted of aggravated murder without the death specifications in Carpenter’s death, the available penalties are 20 years to life, 25 years to life, 30 years to life in prison or life in prison without the possibility of parole.
If Hackett is convicted of the rape count or either kidnapping count, the repeat violent-offender specifications allow the judge to impose one to 10 years in prison in addition to the 11-year maximum sentence for these crimes.
The repeat violent-offender specifications refer to Hackett’s aggravated-murder and aggravated-robbery convictions in the 1979 case.
“There’s no way they’re ever going to let him out on parole, so we’re comfortable dismissing the death specs and just going forward on aggravated murder,” Cantalamessa said.