Prosecutors disagree judge should have allowed jurors to consider lesser offenses against Hamad


By Ed Runyan

runyan@vindy.com

WARREN

The Trumbull County Prosecutor’s Office argued in a Friday filing there was plenty of evidence that Nasser Hamad was guilty of aggravated murder of two young men who went to his house in Howland in 2017 and there was no reason for the judge to instruct jurors that they could find him guilty of lesser charges of voluntary manslaughter.

The office’s response to the appeal arguments Hamad’s attorney filed earlier said case law didn’t allow Hamad’s attorney to present expert testimony from a psychologist that Hamad suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder at the time of the shootings.

Hamad, who lived on state Route 46 near the Eastwood Mall complex, was sentenced to 36 years to life in prison last November for shooting to death two people and injuring three others who went to his house Feb. 25, 2017, as part of an ongoing dispute.

Hamad’s family apparently wishes to continue with the appeal despite Hamad’s death in September at age 49 while being treated for cancer in a prison hospital.

Hamad’s appeals attorney, Samuel Shamansky of Columbus, argued that Judge Ronald Rice’s not allowing jurors to consider voluntary manslaughter instead of aggravated murder was the foremost reason Hamad’s convictions and sentence should be overturned.

But prosecutors cited case law indicating a jury instruction on a lesser offense “is not required unless the evidence presented at trial would reasonably support both an acquittal on the crime charged and a conviction on the lesser ... offense.”

The lesser manslaughter charge is for killing someone when “under the influence of sudden passion or in a sudden fit of rage brought on by serious provocation by the victim that was reasonably sufficient to incite the person to use deadly force,” prosecutors said.

In Hamad’s case, Hamad shot several of the victims in or near their vehicle near the roadway, then “trekked 73.11 feet back to his house, reloaded, and unleashed a second round of terror upon the van and its wounded passengers and upon the fleeing individuals,” prosecutors said.

Hamad pulled the trigger a minimum of 18 times, prosecutors said, killing Joshua Haber, 19, and Josh Williams, 20; and shooting April Trent Vokes, 44, six times, including in her head, chest, hand, arm and leg; Bryce Hendrickson, 19, twice; and John Shively, 17, once.

As for the PTSD testimony Shamansky wanted, prosecutors say the courts view PTSD as something that occurs through the “effects of patterns of abuse.” It is abuse “that occurred prior to the offense itself,” prosecutors said.

But Hamad’s expert witness would have testified the deadly confrontation with the five was the traumatic event that triggered Hamad’s PTSD.

Expert testimony cannot ordinarily be used to establish self-defense, as Hamad wanted to do, prosecutors said. “Courts typically follow the general rule that expert testimony from a psychologist or psychiatrist is inadmissible” except when arguing the defendant was insane, prosecutors said.

“Narrow exceptions exist in cases involving battered-woman or battered-child syndromes,” the prosecutors argue.

Hamad’s case was tried before a jury in county common pleas court. Shamansky also cited several other errors he felt Judge Rice made in the trial.