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Can someone be tried six times? Top court to decide.
COLUMBUS
The Ohio Supreme Court will hear oral arguments at 9 a.m. Tuesday as to whether a man charged in a 14-year-old Austintown homicide case can be tried for a sixth time.
Christopher L. Anderson, 48, is charged in the June 3, 2002, strangulation death of Amber Zurcher, 22, in her Compass West apartment.
Anderson, who maintains his innocence, has been jailed for nearly 14 years awaiting disposition of this case.
Saying the charge and circumstances have not changed, Judge Shirley J. Christian of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court refused a defense request last year to reduce Anderson’s $500,000 bond.
“If the state were now to convict Anderson at a sixth trial, no one could honestly look at the conviction and say that it was a fair process,” wrote Anderson’s lawyer, John B. Juhasz, in his appeal to the state’s top court.
“It destroys the integrity of the courts to allow the government chance after chance, as many cracks as it takes, to secure a conviction,” Juhasz wrote.
The appeal says the due-process clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution bars the prosecution “from making repeated attempts over a long course of time to convict a person by simply wearing him down when there is no new evidence of guilt.”
The appeal stems from a unanimous decision against Anderson by a three-judge panel of the 7th District Court of Appeals in May 2015.
“While we recognize that, at some point, continued retrial will present too onerous a burden on appellant’s rights, that time has not yet come,” the panel ruled.
In May 2003, Judge James C. Evans declared a mistrial because of an unsolicited comment by a witness heard by jurors.
He declared another mistrial in April 2010 because a defense lawyer fell asleep in court.
In November 2003, a jury convicted Anderson of murder; and he was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison, but the conviction was overturned on appeal.
Prosecutors are seeking a new trial based on the fact that Anderson was convicted in that trial, said Ralph Rivera, an assistant Mahoning County prosecutor, who argues appeals.
Trials in December 2008 and August 2010 resulted in hung juries.
Prosecutors noted, however, that the 2008 jury voted 11-1 for conviction.
“The continued prosecution following a hung jury must not infringe on the state’s prosecutorial discretion to bring charges against an accused,” Rivera wrote.
The continued prosecution has not violated Anderson’s rights to due process or protection against double jeopardy, Rivera added.
Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine’s office has filed a friend-of-the-court brief supporting Rivera’s position.
Retrials have protected, not infringed upon, Anderson’s due-process rights, the attorney general’s office argued.