Donna Roberts wants her death-penalty sentence overturned

By Marc Kovac

news@vindy.com

COLUMBUS

The lone woman on Ohio’s death row again asked the state’s high court to overturn her sentence, this time challenging the affirmation of her capital punishment by a judge who didn’t hear the original case.

Legal counsel for Donna Roberts, arguing before the Ohio Supreme Court on Tuesday, said she should have been allowed to directly address the new judge as part of the sentencing process.

“The judge who sentenced Donna to death did not preside over the trial, preside over the penalty phase and did not preside over the actual allocution,” said attorney David Doughten. “Is this permitted under Ohio’s statutory death penalty scheme or ... permissible under the Sixth and Eight Amendment?”

He added, “The new judge did not hear Donna actually speak. [That judge] did an evaluation from the bare bones of the allocution. The argument here is that this defeats the process of allocution.”

Prosecutors, however, countered the new judge involved in the case reviewed all the case material and appropriately affirmed Roberts’ death sentence. Besides, Roberts, 72, told the original jury that capital punishment was the only option in the case, said LuWayne Annos, an assistant Trumbull County prosecutor.

“That’s the sentence that she asked for,” Annos said, adding of Roberts, “There’s no change of heart there. There’s no indication that she regrets her behavior in this case, her role in the murder of her ex-husband. She never expressed remorse, never asked [the original judge] when she did her live allocution to impose a sentence other than the death penalty.”

Roberts and her then-boyfriend, Nathaniel Jackson, were sentenced to death for the 2001 murder of her ex-husband, 57-year-old Robert Fingerhut.

According to documents, Jackson and Roberts planned the murder for months, hoping to collect insurance money. Roberts provided Jackson with access to the Howland home she and Fingerhut shared, where Jackson shot the victim multiple times.

Jackson was tried and convicted separately, though his case has a similar series of high-court challenges and remands. The Ohio Supreme Court affirmed his death sentence last August.

Roberts’ case was vacated twice by justices and remanded to the trial court for resentencing, initially because prosecutors had assisted in writing the judge’s original opinion.

She later successfully argued the judge in the case should have considered her history of depression, head injuries and other mitigating factors before handing down a death sentence.

In the latest case, Roberts’ legal counsel argued her death sentence should be vacated because the original judge had died, leaving a new judge to decide a death sentence without being involved in the original trial or hearing from Roberts directly.

Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor pressed the attorney on that issue, asking about the charity work, head injury and other details later offered by Roberts.

“All of that is in black and white for the judge to be significantly aware of,” she said. “Are you then saying the drama of having Ms. Roberts state it in front of a judge in a courtroom is the missing element here?”

Doughten responded, “Yes, as far as strictly allocution ... .”

Prosecutors, in court filings, argued Roberts, in an unsworn statement given as part of the case, told the jury “that she would not provide any mitigating evidence. She then said, ‘You are bound by law to give me one sentence, the death penalty. You have no other choice. That is what I’m asking you to do, because it is the right thing to do.’”

Justice William O’Neill asked whether Roberts had stated directly that she wanted to receive the death penalty in the case.

Annos responded, “I don’t know she said that she wanted it, but she said that the jury was required by law to recommend it for her.”