43
Mahoning prosecutors want execution date for baby killer
By Marc Kovac
COLUMBUS
Mahoning County prosecutors have asked the state’s high court to set an execution date for a Youngstown man convicted of killing a baby in a 2003 drive-by shooting.
In court documents filed Friday with the Ohio Supreme Court, Mahoning County Prosecutor Paul J. Gains and Assistant Prosecutor Ralph Rivera noted that John E. Drummond “has exhausted all of his state and federal remedies,” and an execution date was warranted.
Drummond was found guilty of murdering 3-month-old Jiyen Dent Jr. in February 2004. According to documents, he and another man fired an assault rifle and 9 mm firearm into two Rutledge Drive homes on the city’s East Side. Drummond, a member of the Lincoln Knolls Crips gang, believed the occupant of one of the homes was involved in the shooting death of another gang member about five years earlier.
Jiyen was sitting in a baby swing in the living room.
Drummond purportedly admitted his involvement to another inmate at the Mahoning County jail, according to documents. The other man involved in the shooting was sentenced to more than 50 years in prison.
Drummond has argued in subsequent legal filings that he received ineffective counsel during his trial, among other legal challenges to his capital sentence.
The Ohio Supreme Court upheld the murder convictions and death sentence in 2006, and federal courts have completed their review of the case.
“With this procedural history, it is clear that ... Drummond has exhausted all of his state and federal court reviews of his convictions and his death sentence,” prosecutors argued in the court filing. “The family of Jiyen Dent Jr. and the citizens of Mahoning County await justice.”
There are more than two dozen executions scheduled through August 2019, though it is uncertain when the state will restart lethal injections.
Dennis McGuire, convicted of the rape and murder of a pregnant woman in Preble County, was the last Ohio inmate put to death, in January 2014.
A federal court initially and Gov. John Kasich later postponed other scheduled lethal injections as the state attempted to find supplies of the drugs involved after manufacturers blocked their use for executions.