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A three-judge panel of the U.S. 6th District Court of Appeals has ordered a public defender's bid to reopen convicted murderer Danny Lee Hill's new claim regarding bite-mark evidence to be argued before a U.S. Ohio Northern District Court judge,
Trumbull County Prosecutor Dennis Watkins claimed the Aug. 30 order allows the federal public defender to "make a new claim of an old claim."
The order was signed by Circuit Judges Karen Nelson Moore, Eric L. Clay and Jane Branstetter Stranch.
Moore and Clay were part of a three-judge panel that supported Hill's claims about being intellectually disabled and thus not eligible for the death penalty. That decision was vacated in 2021 by the opinion of the full 6th District court -- and the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this year refused to take up an appeal.
At issue is the defense lawyers' attempts to overturn the death penalty sentence given to Hill in 1986 by a three-judge panel in Trumbull County. Hill is one of two people convicted of the torture, rape and brutal murder of 12-year-old Raymond Fife in a wooded area on the southwest side of Warren in September 1985.
Watkins said the latest claim is just a "delaying tactic" on the part of both the federal public defenders and the three judges.
The case has been assigned to U.S. Judge John Adams out of Akron.
Fife's mother, Miriam Fife, 81, of Cortland, said she is befuddled and frustrated by the latest court ruling.
"I don't know why they (federal public defenders) are allowed to go so far and do such ridiculous, frivolous things," Fife said. "I thought we were done with the bite-mark thing. The courts had ruled there was nothing to that. I think they are just buying more time. Anything to delay."
The prosecutor agreed with her.
"This so-called new bite mark evidence argument was fully litigated in the Ohio court system and determined to have no merit," Watkins stated in a news release.
Part of the prosecution's case in the 1986 trial was testimony from a forensic odontologist who said in his professional opinion that Hill left bite marks on Fife's genitals. In November 2014, Hill's lawyers moved the state court to hold hearings upon new evidence that the bite-mark identification used at the original trial was invalid. During hearings before a visiting judge in Trumbull County, a forensic odontologist concluded Fife's injury was not a human bite mark.
In a second claim on this evidence filed in June 2020, Hill's defense lawyers alleged the state courts violated Hill's 14th Amendment right to due process, and the three-judge panel agreed.
"This case has been litigated ad nauseum -- 37 years and counting. Enough is enough," Watkins wrote.