Post by thinkinkmesa on Mar 12, 2008 12:41:54 GMT -5
Hearing set on constitutionality of execution by lethal injection
Published:Tuesday, March 11, 2008
By Peter H. Milliken
A recent DNA match revived the 22-year-old murder case.
YOUNGSTOWN — With Bennie L. Adams’ death penalty murder trial looming
March 31, the trial judge will hear arguments this week concerning
the constitutionality of Ohio’s lethal injection method of execution.
The hearing will be at 10 a.m. Thursday before Judge R. Scott
Krichbaum of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court.
Adams’ lawyers, Louis M. DeFabio and Anthony P. Meranto, are asking the judge to dismiss the death-penalty specification against their client because they say lethal injection is a cruel and unusual punishment barred by the U.S. and Ohio constitutions.
Adams, 50, of Hollywood Avenue, will be tried for the Dec. 29, 1985, strangulation death of Gina Tenney, a 19-year-old Youngstown State University student from Ashtabula.
The county prosecutor’s office said DNA evidence preserved from
Tenney’s body was matched recently with a sample of Adams’ DNA, leading to Adams’ indictment in the 22-year-old case last October.
Adams is charged with aggravated murder with a death-penalty
specification, rape, aggravated burglary, aggravated robbery and
kidnapping. The death specification alleges Adams killed Tenney while committing the other crimes against her.
The body of Tenney, who lived upstairs from Adams in an Ohio Avenue apartment, was found floating in the Mahoning River near West Avenue the day after she was slain.
Although Adams was initially a suspect, he wasn’t charged then with killing her because of lack of evidence.
“While perhaps intended to diminish pain, lethal injection also
inflicts cruel and unusual punishment. As electrocution has been
barred in Ohio, so, too, lethal injection must be barred,” DeFabio
and Meranto argued in their motion in advance of Thursday’s hearing.
“Clearly, the evolving standards of human dignity and due process of law require a holding that the death penalty is unconstitutional,” they wrote. The United States is the only major industrialized nation in the world that still inflicts the death penalty, they added.
Lethal injection is “a cruel form of torture that provides a
conscious, sometimes painful and sometimes lingering death,” the defense lawyers argued.
However, Martin P. Desmond, assistant county prosecutor, denied that the death penalty is cruel and unusual punishment and cited a 2000 decision in which he said the Ohio Supreme Court upheld lethal injection.
Capital punishment has been part of U.S. law since the birth of this nation, Desmond said. “Over time, the death penalty has been refined and even halted, but never found per se unconstitutional,” he wrote.
Desmond also maintained that the defense’s motion “is not yet ripe for adjudication” because Adams hasn’t been convicted of aggravated murder or the death specification; a jury hasn’t recommended death; and no death sentence has been imposed.
Desmond said he doesn’t think the hearing should take place at this point. “We’re holding a hearing on something that might not happen in the future,” he explained.
The assistant prosecutor declined to discuss the facts of the Adams case but he said he is ready to try the case as scheduled.
DeFabio complained in a recent pretrial hearing that the current
trial date doesn’t give him and Atty. Meranto enough time to prepare an effective defense. But Judge Krichbaum declined to further delay the trial, which had originally been set for mid-February.
“It’s going [to trial] on March 31, so you’re going to have to get
ready,” Judge Krichbaum told DeFabio.
An orientation for potential jurors will be March 28.
www.vindy.com/news/2008/mar/11/hearing-set-on-constitutionality- of-execution- by/
Published:Tuesday, March 11, 2008
By Peter H. Milliken
A recent DNA match revived the 22-year-old murder case.
YOUNGSTOWN — With Bennie L. Adams’ death penalty murder trial looming
March 31, the trial judge will hear arguments this week concerning
the constitutionality of Ohio’s lethal injection method of execution.
The hearing will be at 10 a.m. Thursday before Judge R. Scott
Krichbaum of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court.
Adams’ lawyers, Louis M. DeFabio and Anthony P. Meranto, are asking the judge to dismiss the death-penalty specification against their client because they say lethal injection is a cruel and unusual punishment barred by the U.S. and Ohio constitutions.
Adams, 50, of Hollywood Avenue, will be tried for the Dec. 29, 1985, strangulation death of Gina Tenney, a 19-year-old Youngstown State University student from Ashtabula.
The county prosecutor’s office said DNA evidence preserved from
Tenney’s body was matched recently with a sample of Adams’ DNA, leading to Adams’ indictment in the 22-year-old case last October.
Adams is charged with aggravated murder with a death-penalty
specification, rape, aggravated burglary, aggravated robbery and
kidnapping. The death specification alleges Adams killed Tenney while committing the other crimes against her.
The body of Tenney, who lived upstairs from Adams in an Ohio Avenue apartment, was found floating in the Mahoning River near West Avenue the day after she was slain.
Although Adams was initially a suspect, he wasn’t charged then with killing her because of lack of evidence.
“While perhaps intended to diminish pain, lethal injection also
inflicts cruel and unusual punishment. As electrocution has been
barred in Ohio, so, too, lethal injection must be barred,” DeFabio
and Meranto argued in their motion in advance of Thursday’s hearing.
“Clearly, the evolving standards of human dignity and due process of law require a holding that the death penalty is unconstitutional,” they wrote. The United States is the only major industrialized nation in the world that still inflicts the death penalty, they added.
Lethal injection is “a cruel form of torture that provides a
conscious, sometimes painful and sometimes lingering death,” the defense lawyers argued.
However, Martin P. Desmond, assistant county prosecutor, denied that the death penalty is cruel and unusual punishment and cited a 2000 decision in which he said the Ohio Supreme Court upheld lethal injection.
Capital punishment has been part of U.S. law since the birth of this nation, Desmond said. “Over time, the death penalty has been refined and even halted, but never found per se unconstitutional,” he wrote.
Desmond also maintained that the defense’s motion “is not yet ripe for adjudication” because Adams hasn’t been convicted of aggravated murder or the death specification; a jury hasn’t recommended death; and no death sentence has been imposed.
Desmond said he doesn’t think the hearing should take place at this point. “We’re holding a hearing on something that might not happen in the future,” he explained.
The assistant prosecutor declined to discuss the facts of the Adams case but he said he is ready to try the case as scheduled.
DeFabio complained in a recent pretrial hearing that the current
trial date doesn’t give him and Atty. Meranto enough time to prepare an effective defense. But Judge Krichbaum declined to further delay the trial, which had originally been set for mid-February.
“It’s going [to trial] on March 31, so you’re going to have to get
ready,” Judge Krichbaum told DeFabio.
An orientation for potential jurors will be March 28.
www.vindy.com/news/2008/mar/11/hearing-set-on-constitutionality- of-execution- by/