Trumbull prosecutor says Danny Hill's request for new trial should be tossed entirely
WARREN
The Trumbull County Prosecutor’s Office has asked a visiting judge to strike the entire 419-page document filed this week by attorneys for Danny Lee Hill that ask for the judge to grant him a new trial.
Hill, 49, is on death row for killing Raymond Fife, 12, in September 1985 in a wooded area along Palmyra Road Southeast.
Visiting Judge Patricia A. Cosgrove recently granted attorneys for Hill the opportunity to ask the judge for a new trial based on bite-mark evidence used at Hill’s trial that Hill’s attorneys said has been proven unreliable.
Hill’s attorneys “filed a 47-page motion augmented with 20 exhibits on June 13, 2016,” the prosecutor’s office said in Thursday’s filing. “This motion totals more than 400 pages, most of which have absolutely NOTHING to do with bite marks detected on Raymod Fife’s lifeless body 30 years ago,” the prosecutor’s motion says.
“The state submits that the bulk of [Hill’s] motion is so far beyond the scope of this court’s [permission] that it should be stricken immediately.”
As an example, Hill’s filing includes an affidavit questioning whether Hill was too intellectually disabled to be interviewed by police, a question that “has been litigated and relitigated ad nauseam in the state and federal courts for 30 years,” the prosecutor’s office filing says.
Read more about the response in Saturday's Vindicator or on Vindy.com.