Appeals court refuses to disqualify Trumbull prosecutor's office from Danny Lee Hill case

Staff report

WARREN

The 11th District Court of Appeals has ruled against Danny Lee Hill’s request to disqualify the Trumbull County Prosecutor’s office from his most recent appeal.

Hill appealed to the 11th District a decision by Visiting Judge Judith Cosgrove that denied Hill the opportunity to be retried in his 1986 aggravated-murder conviction.

Hill was convicted of aggravated murder with three specifications – that he killed while also committing kidnapping, rape and aggravated arson. His victim was Raymond Fife, 12, who was tortured as he traveled on a bicycle to his Boy Scout meeting off Palmyra Road Southwest in 1985.

Hill’s reasoning for seeking a new trial was that bite-mark evidence, which was used in his trial, has since been found unreliable.

As part of his appeal of the bite-mark ruling, Hill asked that the prosecutor’s office be disqualified because of the “intolerable appearance of impropriety” of his former public defender, James Lewis, who is now working for the prosecutor’s office.

But Lewis, who started with the prosecutor’s office in 2013, only works part time on child-support issues in the Trumbull County Family Court.

Therefore, he has no input on any felony cases, such as the Hill case. As long as he does not get involved in the Hill case, there is no conflict for the prosecutor’s office, the ruling says.