Danny Lee Hill attorneys defend 419-page motion for new trial

Staff report

WARREN

Attorneys for Danny Lee Hill, who sits on death row for killing 12-year-old Raymond Fife in 1985, responded Monday to the Trumbull County Prosecutor’s office and its motion to strike Hill’s entire 419-page request for a new trial.

Prosecutors said it should be stricken because so much of it related to matters that have “nothing to do with bite marks” found on the boy’s privates. Prosecutors say the bite-mark evidence is the only thing appropriate for Hill to use in its request for a new trial.

Hill’s 419 pages included arguments related to Hill’s mental abilities, interrogations of Hill by investigators, and whether it was reasonable for testimony to be presented in the 1986 trial indicating that a specific stick found near the attack and injuries on Raymond’s body had characteristics like a “key in a lock.”

Hill said the court would only get a “complete and accurate picture, consistent with a contemporary scientific understanding” of evidence used in 1986, if non-bite-mark information is allowed to be considered.

Hill’s attorneys said Visiting Judge Patricia A. Cosgrove’s decision on whether to grant Hill a new trial should not be made “in a jurisprudential vacuum.”

The filing cited a federal court ruling that said Hill’s attorneys said shows that new evidence related to bite marks should take into consideration “the damaged validity and credibility of the other evidence in the record.”

Prosecutors will certainly use other evidence to argue that the bite marks were not essential to its case, Hill’s attorneys said.

The filing also says that Judge Cosgrove already indicated during a June 21 conference call that she would “not strike the motion in its entirety, but would limit the scope” of the hearing related to the possible new trial to “the bite mark evidence.”