Attorneys file three motions in a week on whether to grant Danny Lee Hill retrial

Staff report

WARREN

Attorneys for the Trumbull County Prosecutor’s office and Danny Lee Hill have peppered a visiting judge with three filings in the past week regarding Hill’s request for a new trial.

Judge Patricia Cosgrove is expected to rule soon on whether to grant Hill a new trial.

Following a filing by Hill attorneys on Wednesday, the prosecutor’s office filed a response Friday, and Hill’s attorneys filed a response to that Monday.

The filings address the validity of bite-mark evidence as a way to identify the person who made bite mark.

The question is relevant in the Hill case because a dental expert testified at Hill’s 1986 trial that bite marks found on the privates of Hill’s victim, Raymond Fife, 12, were made by Hill.

Raymond died a few days after being attacked in a wooded area along Palmyra Road Southwest. Hill, then 18, and Timothy Combs, then 17, were convicted of raping, torturing and burning Raymond. Hill is on death row; Combs will be in prison until at least 2049.

Hill’s attorneys cited a September 2016 “Report to the President” of the United States with its filing Wednesday. The filing says the report affirms their belief that bite marks are “junk science.”

But a filing Friday from the prosecutor’s office said the report does not call bite marks junk science.

Prosecutors once again reiterated that bite marks were a part of the evidence in the Hill trial, “but it was not the State’s only evidence. The Defendant’s own statements to authorities and eyewitness testimony combined to prove his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, even without the bite mark testimony,” prosecutors said.

On Monday, Hill attorneys filed a reply, saying the “Report to the President” found that “available scientific evidence strongly suggests that examiners cannot consistently agree on whether an injury is a human bite mark and cannot identify the source of bite mark with reasonable accuracy.”