5 years after conviction, man still could face death penalty

5 years after conviction, man still could face death penalty
BY JANICE MORSE JMORSE@ENQUIRER.COM

LEBANON - In a case believed to be the first of its kind in Ohio, a Warren County jury will consider whether a convicted killer should get the death penalty even though a different jury heard his case more than five years ago.
A jury began hearing evidence Wednesday in the strange case of Timothy Hancock, which has been bouncing among various courts since a jury convicted him of strangling his prison cellmate in late 2001.
"We've never done this before," Warren County Prosecutor Rachel Hutzel said. "The jury that decided guilt will not be the jury that decides whether he gets death."
Hutzel said she is unaware of any other Ohio cases involving those peculiar circumstances.
Testimony is expected to resume today in Warren County Common Pleas Court in Lebanon. Judge James Flannery is presiding.
A series of higher court decisions stopped short of granting Hancock a new trial but granted him a new "penalty phase," Hutzel said.
After a defendant is convicted in a death-penalty trial, jurors weigh the seriousness of the crime against psychological or other factors, then recommend a sentence to a judge - life with parole eligibility, life with no possibility of parole, or execution.
A former Allen County resident, Hancock, 37, was already serving a life prison term for a 1989 slaying when he killed child rapist Jason Wagner in 2000 at Warren Correctional Institution, a state prison in Turtlecreek Township.
A jury convicted Hancock in Wagner's death and recommended a death sentence. Judge Neal Bronson rejected that sentence because a bailiff mistakenly allowed jurors to see potentially inflammatory evidence.
Bronson imposed a sentence of life without possibility of parole but changed that sentence to death in 2003 after a Middletown appeals court ruled that the jurors should have been allowed to see the death photos of Wagner as they considered the death penalty.
Ultimately, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled that Hancock was entitled to a new penalty phase of his trial, Hutzel said.