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US Supreme Court ruling played role in plea deal for Liberty killer
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
Sean Clemens exhibited unthinkable brutality the morning he killed his neighbor, Jane LaRue Brown, 84, attacking her in her bed with a knife and garden trowel after breaking into her Liberty home. He took a television and her leased Cadillac when he left.
The 34-year-old Clemens’ attempts to cover up his actions, which he said were fueled by use of the prescription drug Xanax, were childlike.
He left a sledge hammer from his home at the murder scene. He burned himself while setting fire to the victim’s vehicle in a wooded area behind his house, told a co-worker shortly afterward what he had done, then asked him not to tell.
Brown was an active, well-liked and well-known former restaurant manager. “She died a horrific death at his hands,” one of her daughters, Cynthia Jakubick, told Judge W. Wyatt McKay at Clemens’ plea and sentencing hearing in common pleas court.
Clemens’ crimes met all the requirements under Ohio law to warrant the death penalty.
But just as Clemens’ trial neared, prosecutors offered a plea deal. He could agree to life in prison without the possibility of parole and avoid the death penalty. He agreed and gave up most appeal rights.
Clemens pleaded guilty to aggravated murder, aggravated robbery, aggravated burglary, arson and tampering with evidence. Judge McKay sentenced Clemens to life in prison without parole plus 261/2 years.
Assistant Prosecutor Chris Becker said after Clemens’ sentencing prosecutors were willing to drop the death penalty against Clemens because recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings suggested some of the evidence gathered in the case might get tossed out.
Clemens’ attorneys with the Ohio Public Defender’s Office argued in a November filing there was a problem with much of the evidence.
First, Liberty patrolman Peter DeAngelo went to Clemens’ house shortly after Brown was found dead and before Clemens was a suspect. Clemens’ two dogs came to the front window, but no person.
DeAngelo went inside the home’s breezeway, a roofed area between the garage and house, and knocked. But while there, DeAngelo noticed red smears on the rear door of the breezeway.
He suspected it was blood and alerted his supervisors, leading to Clemens becoming a suspect, officers finding physical evidence in Clemens’ home and Clemens confessing.
Defense attorneys said DeAngelo’s entering the breezeway was a violation of Clemens’ Fourth Amendment protection from an unreasonable search and seizure.
If Judge McKay would have found DeAngelo’s initial search was unconstitutional, he also may have ruled much of the other evidence obtained that morning was inadmissible at trial. That also could have included Clemens’ confession.
Becker said DeAngelo’s search was “problematic from a legal standpoint.” The judge never ruled on whether he was going to suppress evidence.
The U.S. Supreme Court decided a case in May called Collins v. Virginia that might have supported Clemens’ position regarding DeAngelo’s search. Prosecutors acknowledge that was one of the recent rulings that they reviewed in regard to Clemens.
The Virginia case involved a search by a police officer of a motorcycle under a tarp in the driveway of a home. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, writing for the majority, said the officer violated the owner’s rights by searching without a warrant because that area of the home qualified as “curtilage,” the area immediately surrounding and associated with a home.
“Curtilage” is protected from unreasonable searches and seizures, the ruling says.
County Prosecutor Dennis Watkins declined to get into detail on ways recent Supreme Court rulings might have affected the Clemens case, but he said his office had enough evidence to convict Clemens in Brown’s murder.
Watkins said it is “up to prosecutors to evaluate and make a decision” on whether to remove the death penalty in a particular case, and there are a number of factors to consider.
Clemens had no previous record of violence like David Martin, the last Trumbull County murderer to get the death penalty, Watkins said.