TIMOTHY HANCOCK MEDIA STORIES

TIMOTHY HANCOCK MEDIA STORIES
http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2001/12/17/loc_prison_violated.html
Monday, December 17, 2001
Prison violated inmate policy
Hancock case might have been prevented
By Sheila McLaughlinThe Cincinnati Enquirer
LEBANON — Timothy Hancock's guilt was decided this month when a jury rejected his insanity plea and convicted him of strangling his cellmate at Warren Correctional Institution.
But while a judge decides today whether Mr. Hancock should be put to death for killing child rapist Jason Wagner, a question that surfaced repeatedly at the trial remains unanswered: Does the prison bear any blame?
Interviews, prison records and court testimony show the prison staff violated state policy by failing to perform a required check of Mr. Hancock's mental health file to determine whether he could be celled safely with another prisoner.
Lawyer weighs in In addition, statements from Mr. Hancock and other inmates indicate corrections officers disregarded threats from Mr. Hancock that he would harm Mr. Wagner.
“Tim Hancock and Jason Wagner should have never been in (the) same cell together,” said Patrick Long, one of two lawyers who represented Mr. Hancock at trial.
“It's not a defense to an aggravated murder. But I felt it was a good argument why he should not get the death penalty.”
He contends that prison officials have “blood on their hands” because they did not review the mental health file on Mr. Hancock that indicated the psychotic convicted killer was a threat to Mr. Wagner.
Files weren't reviewed Mr. Hancock's prison mental health records, which were submitted as trial evidence, indicate that he was molested as a child, had an 11-year documented history of mental illness, and had made threats to kill another cellmate in the past.
State corrections procedures suggest that child molesters should not be celled with victims of sexual abuse. However, a mentally ill inmate can be placed with another prisoner under certain circumstances, said Andrea Dean, spokeswoman for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction.
Mr. Hancock said he tied up and killed Mr. Wagner on Nov. 13, 2000, after Mr. Wagner bragged about the 1999 abduction, rape and attempted murder of a 3-year-old Lancaster girl and made a sexual overture while the two played cards.
WCI officials dispute they are responsible in Mr. Wagner's death, but Warden Anthony Brigano acknowledged that corrections staff did not check Mr. Hancock's mental health file.
State corrections policy requires a corrections supervisor to review all the inmate's prison files, including mental health records, before the inmate can be double-celled in the segregation unit, which is used for discipline.
“That did not happen. Those files weren't pulled,” he told the Enquirer in an interview last week.
Capt. Dan Dane, who was responsible for conducting the review, told his supervisors after the killing that he had checked all other relevant files except Mr. Hancock's mental health record, Mr. Brigano said.
Psychological records are considered confidential, but corrections staff are required to check with a prison mental health professional for a review of the file, he said.
“It was reviewed over the next couple of days (after Mr. Wagner's death) by mental health staff, but they didn't see any mental health red flags,” Mr. Brigano said. “It would have come out the same way.”
In addition, WCI policy requires the corrections supervisor to complete an in-house form confirming that the records reviews were completed. However, Capt. Dane did not complete the form on Mr. Hancock.
Mr. Brigano defended the actions of his corrections staff on Nov. 13.
“Regardless of what we do and don't do, I don't think it gives the inmate the OK to go ahead and kill someone else,” he said.
An in-house investigator conducted an internal review of the staff's actions that night, and no disciplinary action was taken, Mr. Brigano said.
However, 14 days after Mr. Wagner died, Mr. Brigano clarified the double-celling policy for segregated inmates in a staff memo and added another level of review as a precaution.
The latest policy requires a count officer, whose job it is to keep tabs on all inmates in the facility, to make sure that the double-celling form is completed and that all records were reviewed.
Prison officials said they celled Mr. Wagner with Mr. Hancock on Nov. 13 because there were no other cells available that day in the six-cell segregation unit. At the time, the prison was nearly double its capacity.
Mr. Hancock had been in Cell 127 for several days after he committed a rules infraction by refusing to cell with another inmate in the general cell block of protective custody, Warden Brigano said.
Mr. Wagner was sent to segregation the afternoon of Nov. 13 after he was caught making sexually explicit collect phone calls to the teen-aged daughter of a Dayton, Ohio, judge.
By 2:30 p.m., Mr. Wagner and Mr. Hancock were sharing a cell. A short time later, Mr. Hancock asked to talk to a psychiatric nurse because he didn't want a cellmate and feared that Mr. Wagner might have AIDS. The nurse persuaded Mr. Hancock to remain in the cell with Mr. Wagner. By midnight, Mr. Wagner was dead.
In court testimony, several corrections officers said neither inmate objected to the arrangement.
However, in letters to the Enquirer before his trial and in statements he made to state troopers investigating the homicide, Mr. Hancock said he initially refused to take Mr. Wagner into his cell and threatened to harm him. Mr. Hancock said he later relented after guards threatened to douse him with pepper spray or Mace.
Inmates in an adjoining protective custody cell block said they heard Mr. Hancock making threats.
Warden Brigano disputed that inmates could have overheard anything because the two areas are separated by a Plexiglas wall.
But Mr. Long said the Plexiglas has holes in it and the inmates he interviewed were adamant that they could hear through the wall.
“Hancock told the CO's (corrections officers), if you put him in here with me, I'm going to kill him,” inmate Frank Robinson told Trooper L.T. McCormick two months after the killing.
“They knew this, and put him in there anyway. ... I couldn't sleep all night because I had a bad feeling about it.”
Inmate Todd Torok told the trooper that Mr. Wagner feared for his life and expressed concerns to a corrections supervisor.
“I heard Wagner say, "I don't want to go in the cell with Hancock.' He said "Hancock is going to kill me,'” he told Trooper McCormick.
http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2001/11/26/loc_man_could_get_death.html

Monday, November 26, 2001
Man could get death penalty in jail killing
Today's trial centers on insanity angle
By Sheila McLaughlinThe Cincinnati Enquirer
Timothy Hancock does not deny that he strangled his cellmate while the two were in protective custody last November at Warren Correctional Institution. But his lawyers say he was insane when he killed Jason Wagner, a child molester serving a sentence of 44 years to life in the 1999 kidnapping and attempted murder of a 3-year-old girl in Lancaster, Ohio.
That will be the focus today as the death penalty case against Mr. Hancock opens in a Lebanon courtroom. The trial is expected to last two weeks.
Mr. Hancock, 31, — who earlier avoided a capital case in a plea bargain involving the 1989 killing of a female family friend — could be spared the death penalty again if the jury agrees with argument.
“This trial is going to be about whether or not Tim Hancock knew the wrongfulness of his actions,” said Donald Oda II, one of two attorneys appointed to represent Mr. Hancock.
“The issue of the trial is not going to be who did it. If you put two people in cell and a few hours later one of them is dead, that's not the issue.”
In statements to investigators and in letters to the Enquirer and others shared by a relative, Mr. Hancock said he “snapped” when he strangled Mr. Wagner, 25, with a piece of bedsheet on Nov. 13, 2000.
Mr. Hancock detailed the killing in a letter to his niece.
Mr. Hancock said he became enraged when he and Mr. Wagner were playing cards because Mr. Wagner bragged about the abduction and molestation of 3-year-old Ashley Taggart of Lancaster, and the abuse of other children.
Ashley was found bound and gagged in Mr. Wagner's attic four days after she disappeared from her nearby back yard. Mr. Wagner had served time in prison in 1994 and 1996 for sex crimes involving a 4-year-old and a 12-year-old.
Mr. Hancock wrote that he tricked Mr. Wagner into faking a hostage incident in a plot to have Mr. Wagner removed from the cell.
“I tied him with 4 way (sic) restraints (both hands and feet) with a noose on his neck — I was so (expletive) over all the (expletive) that I snapped. I told him I tricked him like he did that little girl and then I killed him,” Mr. Hancock wrote to his niece.
A guard found Mr. Wagner dead in the cell shortly before midnight. Cause of death was ruled homicide by ligature strangulation.
Mr. Hancock said he warned guards against placing Mr. Wagner in his segregated cell in protective cus tody, and even threatened to hurt Mr. Wagner.
Mr. Hancock, who is serving a sentence of 24 years to life in the 1989 homicide, said he was not supposed to have a cellmate because he had received threats from members of the Aryan Brotherhood in another prison.
He said he gave in and allowed Mr. Wagner in the cell after guards threatened to douse him with pepper spray.
Prison officials have declined to talk about what led to the killing or the cell arrangement because of the criminal investigation.
Harry Russell, warden of Lebanon Correctional Institution where Mr. Hancock now is incarcerated, denied the Enquirer permission to interview Mr. Hancock.
Warren County Prosecutor Tim Oliver declined to comment on the case, saying it was too close to trial. The indictment alleges that Mr. Hancock planned the killing.
If convicted, Mr. Hancock could be the second Warren County de fendant to receive the death penalty since 1907. Jurors last recommended death in 1998 for James Hanna, who killed his cellmate at Lebanon Correctional Institution.
The county has sought the death penalty unsuccessfully seven other times since 1985. The most recent case was that of Jeffrey Bornhoeft, a 31-year-old Mason father of three found not guilty by reason of insanity a year ago in the killing of his ex-wife's new husband.
http://www.channelcincinnati.com/news/2573760/detail.html
Prisoner Gets Death Sentence For Killing Cellmate
Judge Changes Sentence From Life In Prison
LEBANON, Ohio -- A prisoner convicted of strangling his cellmate has been sentenced to be executed, two years after he initially got a life sentence and prosecutors appealed to demand stiffer punishment.


Timothy Hancock's death sentence will be automatically appealed to the Ohio Supreme Court, as is required in capital cases.


Hancock, 33, was convicted of the Nov. 13, 2000, slaying of cellmate Jason Wagner, 25, of Lancaster. They shared a cell at Warren Correctional Institution near Lebanon, about 25 miles north of Cincinnati.


Hancock already was serving a life term for a 1990 murder.


Warren County Common Pleas Judge Neal Bronson on Tuesday sentenced Hancock to execution. In 2001, the same judge had rejected a jury's recommendation that Hancock be sentenced to death.


Bronson said then that he could not accept the jury's recommendation because his court staff allowed jurors to see potentially inflammatory evidence while they deliberated.



He said his staff "inadvertently and inappropriately" gave jurors courtroom evidence that included pictures of Wagner after his death, the ligature used to strangle him and audiotapes of statements Hancock made to investigators.


Defense lawyers argued that was improper. They also argued that prison officials were at fault for putting the two prisoners in the same cell, because Hancock had a history of mental illness and was molested as a child. Jurors rejected Hancock's plea of insanity.


Prison officials said no other cells were available on the day Wagner was killed. They denied any responsibility for Wagner's death.



Copyright 2003 by ChannelCincinnati.com. The Associated Press contributed to this report. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
12/02/2001

LEBANON, OhioDoctor: Defendant driven by paranoia in cell slaying --(Dayton Daily News)-- Rather than a human being, Timothy Hancock perceived Jason Wagner as an object and himself as an "angel" directed by God to kill the convicted child molester after he was moved into Hancock's cell at Warren Correctional Institution, a psychiatrist hired by the defense said Friday.
http://www.prodeathpenalty.com/repeat_murder.htm
10/2003 - OhioPrison Inmate Gets Death Sentence In Strangling An Ohio prisoner convicted of strangling his cellmate will be executed. The prisoner, Timothy Hancock, 33, initially got a life sentence for the November 2000 slaying. However, Warren County prosecutors appealed to demand stiffer punishment, and a new sentencing was ordered. Hancock's death sentence will be automatically appealed to the Ohio Supreme Court, which is required in capital cases. Hancock was convicted two years ago of killing Jason Wagner, 25,of Lancaster. They shared a cell at Warren Correctional Institution near Lebanon. Hancock was serving a life term for a 1990 murder.
http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2000/11/15/loc_little_girls.html
Little girl's kidnapper strangled in his cell

By Sheila McLaughlinThe Cincinnati Enquirer
TURTLECREEK TWP. — A Lancaster, Ohio, man convicted of kidnapping a 3-year-old and holding her hostage in his attic last year has been found strangled in his prison cell at Warren Correctional Institution.
A corrections officer making routine checks found the body of Jason E. Wagner, 25, shortly before midnight Monday in the protective custody section, the Ohio State Highway Patrol said.
Joe Andrews, spokesman for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, said Mr. Wagner had been locked down for the night with his cellmate, Timothy L. Hancock, 30, since about 9:30 p.m. Monday.
State troopers investigating the slaying said they have questioned a suspect but have not filed any charges against the prisoner. Sgt. Gary Lewis declined to identify the suspect or confirm it was the cellmate.
“We have a suspect, and basically we have to present information to a prosecutor and let him make the determination,” Sgt. Lewis said.
The cellmate, Mr. Hancock, has spent the past 10 years in prison and is serving 24 years to life on charges of aggravated murder and felonious assault in Allen County, corrections records show. Mr. Andrews declined to say why Mr. Hancock was in protective custody, saying that information is confidential by law.
Warren County Prosecutor Tim Oliver said he was given few details about the case but expects it will be taken directly to a grand jury because the suspect already is in custody.
Mr. Wagner was among 120 inmates in the protective custody pod at WCI. He was placed in the wing March 9 — a week after his arrival at the prison — because of the nature of his crime, Mr. Andrews said.
He said that there was no history of trouble between Mr. Wagner and Mr. Hancock and that Mr. Wagner had not posed any disciplinary problems at the prison.
Mr. Wagner, who had a history of sex offenses involving children, was sentenced in February to serve 44 years to life in prison for taking Ashley Taggart from her yard in Lancaster, about 30 miles east of Columbus.
Volunteers searched for four days before police found the girl, bound and gagged but alive, in an attic in a rented house where Mr. Wagner was staying about 100 yards from her home.
Mr. Wagner pleaded guilty to charges that included kidnapping, felonious assault, attempted murder and child endangering.
Ashley's grandmother, Pam Echard, said she learned of Mr. Wagner's death about 9:30 a.m. Tuesday from a Columbus TV reporter. She expressed relief.
“It's ended, and he's gone. ... It was a relief when (Mr. Wagner) was sentenced and sent to prison,” Mrs. Echard said. “Now it's more like closure, knowing he will never, ever hurt anyone else again.”
Hollie Saunders of Gannett News Service contributed to this report.