Visiting judge rules against granting new trial to Trumbull murderer

By Ed Runyan

runyan@vindy.com

WARREN

Visiting Judge Patricia Cosgrove has denied a request by attorneys for death row inmate Danny Lee Hill to receive a new trial based on bite-mark evidence used at his 1986 trial.

Judge Cosgrove, however, agrees with Hill’s attorneys that the practice of using bite marks to identify the person who made the mark has been found unreliable. In fact, the scientific community has continued to downgrade the value of such evidence even since Hill’s attorneys requested the new trial in 2014.

But the law requires anyone seeking a new trial based on newly discovered evidence, as Hill’s attorneys did, to prove that there is a “strong probability that it will change the result if a new trial is granted,” the ruling says.

Hill was convicted of aggravated murder with three specifications – that he killed while also committing kidnapping, rape and aggravated arson.

The bite-mark evidence was a factor in proving whether Hill’s mouth came in contact with his victim’s privates, but it had no bearing on the kidnapping specification, the judge said.

“Most importantly, the bite-mark evidence does nothing to [spoil] the sufficiency of the overwhelming evidence against [Hill] on the kidnapping specification to the aggravated murder count,” the ruling says.

Hill’s conviction of aggravated murder with a kidnapping specification was enough for Hill to get a death sentence, Judge Cosgrove said.

Prosecutors have said from the beginning that the bite marks were not crucial to convicting Hill, 49, of the murder of Raymond Fife, 12. Timothy Combs, 17 at the time, also was convicted of the murder and was sentenced to life in prison with parole eligibility in 2049.

Hill and Combs were convicted of raping, torturing, kidnapping and burning Raymond in a wooded area along Palmyra Road on Sept. 10, 1985, as Raymond rode his bicycle to a friend’s house so they could attend a Boy Scout meeting. Raymond died two days later from his injuries.

Miriam Fife, Raymond’s mother and a longtime Trumbull County victim-witness advocate, said after learning of the ruling that it’s comforting that her family does not have to endure another trial.

But it’s frustrating that even a challenge such as bite marks can get this much attention when even more standard challenges have taken so many years to resolve.

“I don’t like to see this kind of money spent,” she said of the cost of the bite-marks claim. “If you looked into how much money was spent on just this [matter], how much could we have spent on feeding children,” she said.

In a prepared statement, Trumbull County Prosecutor Dennis Watkins said his office is pleased with the ruling, saying it “is one of a litany of opinions from various state and federal courts affirming the fairness of the trial” and the judges who handled it.

Hill’s own statements provided enough information for him to be convicted on the murder and kidnapping specification, the judge said in her ruling. Hill admitted he stayed with Raymond while Combs went to a nearby store to get lighter or charcoal fluid that was used to burn the boy.

“According to evidence at trial ... Hill refused to help [Raymond] as [Raymond] repeatedly attempted to run or crawl away from the attack,” the ruling says. Hill “watched over Fife in the secluded, wooded area while Combs got the lighter or charcoal fluid,” the ruling said.

She added that “by Hill’s own admissions, he did nothing to help the boy escape, did not seek medical attention for Fife, even when he was alone with him, and never attempted to intervene in the protracted torture of the victim.”

She added that her review of the recorded interviews Hill gave to police showed the “calm, detached manner that Hill described the struggle of Raymond Fife during the brutal attack.”

While Combs was gone, “passers-by heard screams of ‘pain’ from a ‘child’ that lasted 20 to 30 seconds,” Judge Cosgrove said.

“Even if the court were to conclude based on today’s advances in forensic odontology ... that the bite-mark evidence is unreliable ... there is no evidence, much less a strong probability, that a new trial would result in a different outcome,” she wrote.