state v. hancock, case no. 2003-2099

MEDIA RELEASE

DECISION SUMMARIES

Wednesday, Feb. 1, 2006

Court Affirms Conviction for Lebanon Prison

Murder, Orders New Sentencing Process

state v. hancock, case no. 2003-2099

12th district court of appeals (warren county)



COLUMBUS – The Supreme Court of Ohio today unanimously affirmed the aggravated murder conviction of Timothy Hancock for the November 2000 strangulation killing of Jason Wagner while Wagner was Hancock’s cellmate at the Warren Correctional Institution in Lebanon. In reviewing the trial court’s sentencing process, however, the Court held 4-3 that because the jury inadvertently reviewed evidence the trial judge had ordered excluded from the penalty phase of the trial, the jury’s recommendation of a death sentence was invalid. Based on that finding, the case was remanded to the Warren County Common Pleas court for a new sentencing hearing.

Hancock, who was serving a term at the Lebanon prison facility for a prior aggravated murder conviction, tricked Wagner into letting Hancock tie his arms and legs to a bed frame, and then strangled Wagner to death using a rolled-up and knotted bed sheet. When guards discovered the crime, Hancock said he killed Wagner because Wagner had bragged about molesting a child.

At trial, a jury found Hancock guilty of aggravated murder with one death penalty specification, the trial court, after conducting a bench trial, found Hancock guilty of a second death specification. At the start of the penalty phase, the judge ruled that in considering whether to recommend a death sentence or an alternative term of life imprisonment, jurors should not be provided with several items of evidence they had been permitted to review during the guilt phase of the trial. Excluded items included Hancock’s statement to investigators, photos of the crime scene and the actual bed-sheet ligature he had used to strangle the victim. The jury retired to deliberate and subsequently returned a death penalty recommendation.

After the jury had reported its verdict, however, the judge discovered that the statement and other items of evidence he had ordered to be excluded from the penalty phase had inadvertently been sent to the jury room, and had been considered by jurors in arriving at their death penalty recommendation. Finding that this error could not be undone and was “presumptively prejudicial” to Hancock, the judge declared the penalty phase of the case a mistrial, and ruled that under the circumstances he must disregard the jury’s death penalty recommendation. Without conducting his own independent weighing of aggravating and mitigating factors in the case, the judge proceeded to impose a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.

The state appealed to the 12th District Court of Appeals, which ruled that the contested evidence viewed by jurors was admissible in the penalty phase of the trial, and held that the trial court had abused its discretion in declaring a mistrial based on the jury’s exposure to that material. The Court of Appeals reinstated the jury’s recommendation of a death sentence, and remanded the case to the trial judge for his independent weighing of the aggravating and mitigating factors as required by the state’s capital sentencing statute. After conducting that weighing process, the judge adopted the jury’s death sentence recommendation.

In today’s decision, the Supreme Court majority held that the 12th District erred when it overturned as an “abuse of discretion” the trial judge’s declaration of a mistrial in the original sentencing phase. Writing for the Court, Chief Justice Thomas J. Moyer said that to qualify as an abuse of discretion, the action of a trial judge must be more than an error of law or judgment but must rather be “ … not justified by, and clearly against reason and evidence,” or reflect an “attitude (that) is unreasonable, arbitrary or unconscionable”

The Chief Justice wrote: “The trial judge’s action in excluding the evidence in question here simply cannot be described in the above terms. The central task of the jury in the penalty phase of a capital case is to ‘determine whether the aggravating circumstances the offender was found guilty of committing are sufficient to outweigh the mitigating factors present in the case.’ R.C. 2929.03(D)(2). A trial judge cannot be said to have acted arbitrarily or unconscionably merely because he exercised caution to ensure that the jury focused its attention on that task. Here, the trial court could reasonably have determined that these particular exhibits had an excessive tendency to focus the jury’s attention on the aggravated murder itself and away from the aggravating circumstances and mitigating factors that the jury was required to balance.”

While acknowledging that a different trial judge could reasonably have held that the challenged items of evidence were admissible in the penalty phase, Moyer said the question before the Supreme Court “is whether, in excluding (the challenged evidence), the trial judge acted arbitrarily, unreasonably or unconscionably. On the record before us, we cannot conclude that he did.”

Based on that finding, the Chief Justice wrote that “(t)he jury’s recommendation of death was tainted by its exposure, during penalty-phase deliberations, to evidence that the trial court had reasonably excluded from that phase. Therefore, that recommendation cannot serve as the basis for a death sentence in this case. It follows that the court of appeals erred in holding the declaration of a mistrial by the trial court to be an abuse of discretion. We therefore sustain Hancock’s first proposition of law, vacate his death sentence, and remand for resentencing.”

In clarifying its remand order, the Court cited language from the capital sentencing statute in force when Hancock’s crime was committed, former R.C. 2929.06(B), that specifically includes the death penalty and life imprisonment without the possibility of parole as options available to the court when a defendant is resentenced “because of error that occurred in the sentencing phase of the trial.”

Chief Justice Moyer’s opinion was joined by Justices Paul E. Pfeifer, Maureen O’Connor and Judith Ann Lanzinger.

Justice Alice Robie Resnick entered an opinion, joined by Justices Evelyn Lundberg Stratton and Terrence O’Donnell, partially concurring and partially dissenting from the majority holding. While she concurred with the majority affirmance of Hancock’s aggravated murder conviction, Justice Resnick wrote that she would also affirm the 12th District’s finding that the trial court abused its discretion in declaring a mistrial, and would therefore uphold the death sentence imposed on Hancock by the trial court.

Citing several of this Court’s prior decisions in death penalty cases, Justice Resnick said R.C. 2929.04(B) not only permits trial juries to revisit guilt-phase evidence about the “nature and circumstances of the crime” when they make their sentencing recommendation, the statute affirmatively requires that such evidence be reviewed in the penalty phase. The purpose of that review, she noted, is to establish whether and to what extent the defendant is entitled to mitigation of his sentence based on the specific circumstances under which the crime took place.

Quoting from the Court’s 1987 holding in State v. Stumpf, Justice Resnick wrote that, “ … although the nature and circumstances of the offense may not be used as aggravating circumstances, we have held that they may be cited ‘as reasons supporting [a] finding that the aggravating circumstances were sufficient to outweigh the mitigating factors.’”

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Contacts:

Representing the State of Ohio and Warren County prosecutor’s office:

Andrew Sievers, 513.695.1335

Representing Timothy Hancock:

Joseph E. Wilhelm, 614.466.5394