WARREN — Trumbull County Prosecutor Dennis Watkins said he applauds the efforts of those involved with introducing legislation to permit the use of nitrogen hypoxia to carry out the death penalty in Ohio.

The legislation was introduced by Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, along with state Reps. Brian Stewart, R-Ashville, and Phil Plummer, R-Dayton, and Lou Tobin, executive director of the Ohio Prosecuting Attorneys Association.

“This legislation is aimed at kickstarting the state’s stalled capital punishment system,” Watkins stated in a news release. “Ending the present logjam is vital to having public confidence restored to see that there is finality in cases in court.”

In introducing the legislation, Yost used the example of Norman Stout, now 93, “who has been seeking justice for his wife for nearly four decades.” Mary Jane Stout was murdered by defendant David Stumpf during a May 1984 robbery near the couple’s home in New Concord.

In Trumbull County, the Miriam Fife family has been waiting more than 38 years to see justice done for her 12-year-old son Raymond by having his murderer, Danny Lee Hill’s, death sentence carried out. Miriam, now age 83, has been “twisting in the wind” facing a barrage of appeals (now 30) that seem never ending.

Watkins states in the release that he fully supports the efforts of Stewart and Plummer in introducing this legislation promoting the new method of execution using nitrogen gas.

“Trumbull County has been actively pursuing the death penalty in appropriate cases for over 40 years,” Watkins states, quoting from his Nov. 8, 2023, letter to Tobin expressing his support for the use of nitrogen gas in Ohio executions.

Watkins also noted in his letter about his active lobbying in the execution of Kenneth Biros in 2009, who was the first person to be executed by a single drug protocol in United States history.

“The Biros case, for another important reason, is also relevant as to why my office fully supports efforts by responsible legislators and others to take all necessary actions to ensure that the capital punishment law is timely enforced in our great state,” Watkins wrote.

Biros was convicted by a jury and sentenced to death on Oct. 29, 1991, for the aggravated murder / torture, attempted rape, and robbery of 22-year-old Tami Engstrom. After many years of litigation in state and federal courts, Biros’ execution date was delayed several times. By 2006, a federal court in Ohio further delayed Biros’ execution date because of alleged constitutional violations of his rights with Ohio’s lethal injection method involving the use of three different drugs. Finally, after another federal court delay in the spring of 2009, then-Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland instructed Ohio’s Department of Rehabilitation and Correction to find another method for executing Biros as soon as possible. Watkins said this act was important because Tami’s mother, Mary Jane Heiss, was dying, and her last wish was to see her daughter’s killer executed. On Dec. 8, 2009, Biros was executed after receiving a single dose of sodium thiopental at Southern Ohio Correctional Facility. Heiss died a short time later.

Watkins is seeing a repeat of this scenario in the case of death row inmate Danny Lee Hill and others from Trumbull County, including serial killer Stanley Adams and Andre Williams.

Like Mary Jane Heiss, Watkins writes that the mother of Hill’s murder victim, 12-year-old Raymond Fife, has waited over 38 years to see justice done and the law carried out. That mother, Miriam Fife, now age 83, has attended numerous hearings, spending countless days and hours in courtrooms in 30 different legal proceedings and reliving the horrors of the crime against her son. Because the state is unable to obtain execution drugs to carry out court-ordered executions in Ohio, even after all final appeals have been exhausted — Fife has seen Danny Lee Hill’s execution date extended to July 22, 2026.

“Miriam Fife should not be — at age 83 — twisting in the wind waiting for us to do our jobs,” Watkins wrote in his letter to Tobin.

Mahoning County Prosecutor Gena DeGenova said in an emailed statement:

“I understand there are strong ethical, legal and economic issues weighing for and against the death penalty and the means of carrying it out. As I have said in the past, it is up to the legislature to enact the laws and up to me, as prosecutor, to follow them.

“The Ohio Prosecuting Attorneys Association supports this legislation, and we will monitor this bill as it moves forward. All I can say for certain is that my office follows the law. If cases come before my office where the facts warrant a death specification, we will prosecute accordingly,” DeGenova said.