Judge to make ruling on Hill claim without oral arguments – Youngstown Vindicator
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WARREN — A visiting judge will not hear oral arguments determining the merits of defense claims that Danny Lee Hill is mentally and intellectually disabled and thus constitutionally prohibited from facing the death penalty.
Instead, Judge Patricia A. Cosgrove, a retired Summit County jurist who was assigned the Hill case, ruled she will consider briefs submitted by both sides before making a decision on Hill’s Eighth Amendment claim for relief by using a 2002 Supreme Court decision in the Atkins vs. Virginia case that prohibits execution of the mentally disabled.
In Cosgrove’s order filed earlier this month, she noted a Nov. 1 Zoom conference was held with counsel to discuss the schedule.
Cosgrove also tackled the issue of state attorneys being opposed to having federal public defenders Laura Riga and Mathew Thomas Gay working on the case.
In her order, Cosgrove writes, “This court agrees with the state that the federal district court order does not impose any mandatory duty on the state court to permit representation of counsel.”
The judge, however, allowed Gay and Riga to file briefs on the merits of Hill’s renewed Atkins claim.
Both parties at the Zoom hearing also agreed that Cosgrove can make a ruling without the necessity of oral arguments “because both sides have filed extensive and well-researched briefs,” the judge wrote.
A court official said she expects Cosgrove to render a decision on Hill’s motion around the first of the year.
Meanwile, the judge also stated she will not consider a friend of the court brief filed on behalf of Miriam Fife, the mother of Hill’s murder victim, Raymond Fife. Miriam Fife had asked the court to dismiss Hill’s claim under the precipes of Marsy’s Law that gives rights to victims of crime in Ohio.
Cosgrove was assigned the Hill case because all Trumbull County judges had cited conflict of interest because Miriam Fife had worked for years as the victim’s advocate in the county courts.
Hill is scheduled to be injected lethally July 22, 2026, after being convicted by a three-judge panel in the September 1985 torture-killing of 12-year-old Raymond in a field in southwest Warren. Hill has been appealing the conviction for more than 36 years.
Hill was 19 at the time of the rape and murder, among other crimes committed upon the boy. It has been argued Hill had diminished mental capacity and was barely literate. Another defendant, Timothy Combs, a juvenile at the time, was ineligible for the death penalty and died in prison in 2018 while serving multiple life sentences.