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YOUNGSTOWN -- Mahoning County prosecutors succeeded in convincing Mahoning County Common Pleas Court Judge R. Scott Krichbaum this week to hold one trial for Vincent Marbley, 61, and Eddie Winphrie, 43, instead of two trials, in the Oct. 17, 2024, murder of Reynaldo Hernandez, 24, at a home on Bott Street on Youngstown's East Side.
The aggravated murder trial is set to begin Monday.
But a new issue arose in the case at the same time: Prosecutors learned that a Mahoning County jail inmate contacted law enforcement Aug. 29 to say that he had information relevant to the guilt or innocence of one of the defendants and later shared that information with law enforcement.
It led to a preliminary interview and then a more formal interview Tuesday morning with a Youngstown police detective at the same time the attorneys were having a pretrial hearing in the case.
Krichbaum was not happy that the formal interview with the inmate had not been completed before the hearing, but a discussion ensued regarding what the attorneys knew from a recording of the preliminary interview.
Defense attorney Lou DeFabio, who represents Marbley, said he wanted to use the inmate's testimony in the trial based on what he knows. DeFabio said he would need more time than the several days left before Monday's trial date to address the inmate's testimony.
Defense attorney Tony Meranto said the inmate's statements indicate to him that Meranto should step aside as Winphrie's attorney because Meranto had been serving as the inmate's attorney also, creating a likely conflict of interest. Getting a new attorney up to speed on the case would require the trial to be postponed, Meranto said.
Mahoning County Prosecutor Lynn Maro and Assistant Prosecutor John Juhasz also filed a motion Monday asking for the trial to be postponed because of the inmate's statements.
The filing states that the parties were aware when they participated in a motions hearing Sept. 8 that the inmate had reached out to law enforcement with information to offer.
The filing states that a written message the inmate gave to the sheriff's office contained unclear descriptions of the case he wanted to provide information about. For instance, he said the murder took place in Campbell instead of Youngstown's East Side.
So the lead detective in the Hernandez murder conducted the preliminary interview Sept. 4 and provided prosecutors with enough detail to suggest that he knew both Marbley and Winphrie and that one of them told him who the gunman in the murder was.
Prosecutors held off on asking for an in-depth interview with the inmate because of the conflict involving the inmate's attorney, the filing states. The inmate now has a new attorney, who obtained permission for the inmate to give the formal interview, the filing states.
But even after that, prosecutors will have to analyze and investigate the information provided and decide whether to call the inmate to testify at the trial, the prosecution filing states. It would be helpful to the prosecution's case to "show who the 'principal' offender is" at the Marbley-Winphrie trial, the filing adds.
At Tuesday's pretrial hearing, Krichbaum said he was giving the parties until today to determine whether they consider the inmate's statements to be credible enough to require the trial to be postponed and to determine whether a new attorney needs to be appointed to replace Meranto.
As for the question of whether the two defendants should be tried separately or together, Krichbaum filed an entry in both cases Tuesday morning saying they should be tried together.
The rulings address Marbley's and Winprhies' requests for the trials to be separated. The rulings state that a key reason for separating trials is not present in this case -- a confession by one defendant that also implicates the other defendant.
Another reason is because the charges against Marbley and Winphrie are identical and the witnesses and evidence against both men "are likewise identical."