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Associated Press Saturday Ohio Headlines - 3/6/2010
Latest Ohio news, sports, business and entertainment:
DEATH PENALTY-OHIO
Court rejects execution delay for Ohio strangler
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) - An Ohio inmate facing death next week for strangling his elderly neighbor has been denied an execution delay that would have let him challenge the state's new lethal injection policy.
A three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled unanimously Friday against the request by Lawrence Reynolds, who is scheduled to die Tuesday.
Judge Boyce Martin says the request is denied "regretfully" and argues the court hasn't properly given inmates time to dispute Ohio's new one-drug injection.
He says the court must abide by its decisions earlier this year and last year that denied similar requests.
The 43-year-old Reynolds says the state hasn't corrected problems with accessing veins and that a new backup method that injects lethal drugs into muscle is untried and could cause pain.
CYANIDE DEATH
Ohio jury convicts doctor in wife's cyanide death
CLEVELAND (AP) - A jury in Ohio has convicted a doctor of aggravated murder in the 2005 cyanide poisoning death of his wife.
The jury in Cleveland returned the verdict Friday in the trial of 41-year-old Dr. Yazeed Essa (EE'-suh). Deliberations began Tuesday morning.
Essa faces a maximum sentence of life in prison, with parole possible after 20 years for the death of 38-year-old Rosemarie Essa.
The prosecutor says Essa was trying to escape a loveless marriage and live with his mistress when he laced his wife's calcium capsule with cyanide. The defense says the mistress wanted to marry the doctor and had a motive to kill his wife.
Essa was an emergency room doctor in Akron and fled to Lebanon after his wife's death. He gave up an extradition fight and was returned from Cyprus to Ohio last year.
TEEN SLAYINGS
Jurors hear more testimony in teens' killings
CINCINNATI (AP) - Jurors in the second day of trial for an Ohio man charged with killing two teenage girls viewed photos of the remains of two women he has pleaded guilty to murdering.
Anthony Kirkland of Cincinnati was to have been tried in all four killings but pleaded guilty Thursday to murder and other charges in the 2006 deaths of 45-year-old Mary Jo Newton and 25-year-old Kimya Rolison.
Newton's sister and Rolison's father testified Friday that both women had problems with drugs. In a video deposition from California, Rolison's father became emotional when identifying a photo of his daughter.
Prosecutors have said evidence in the killings of the two women is relevant to their case against Kirkland in the teens' deaths.
TODDLER DEATH-HOMICIDE
Ohioan pleads not guilty in toddler scalding death
CLEVELAND (AP) - A Cleveland woman has pleaded not guilty to aggravated murder in the death of her 2-year-old daughter, who police say was scalded in hot water after she soiled bed sheets.
Twenty-nine-year-old Tyesha Hamilton entered the plea Friday and a judge continued her $1 million bond. A pretrial hearing is scheduled for Tuesday on the charges, which also include felonious assault and child endangering.
Hamilton's daughter, Alexandria, was found unresponsive by paramedics at an apartment with her mother last month.
County officials say Hamilton, who has three other children, lost custody of them in 2007 because she neglected them while struggling with drug addiction.
Defense attorney Lawrence Floyd declined comment after her court appearance.
COURTROOM-SWITCHBLADE
Switchblade found taped under Ohio courtroom table
CLEVELAND (AP) - Authorities say they found a switchblade knife taped beneath a Cleveland courtroom table where an Ohio man charged with murder was seated during his trial.
Cuyahoga County sheriff's spokesman John O'Brien says a deputy noticed Joaquin Hicks fidgeting under the table Friday when he was brought into Common Pleas Court.
O'Brien says the deputy discovered the blade and the courtroom was immediately cleared out. No one was injured.
Hicks is charged with aggravated murder, kidnapping, aggravated robbery and attempted murder in the shootings of two workers at a park in downtown Cleveland. A jury is deliberating.
O'Brien says authorities don't know how the blade made it inside the courtroom.
Hicks' attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.
OHIO TROOPER CRASH
Patrol: Ohio trooper going too fast in fatal crash
CAREY, Ohio (AP) - The State Highway Patrol says an Ohio trooper killed in a crash while on duty was driving too fast when his cruiser went off a road and rolled several times.
Investigators say the trooper was going 116 mph before the accident in early February.
Trooper Andrew Baldridge died in the crash just outside Carey in northwest Ohio. A training officer who riding with him was injured.
Baldridge was 25 years old and had graduated from the highway patrol academy in December.
He was responding to a backup request from a sheriff's deputy who was searching through a home where vagrants were suspected to be living.
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Information from: The Courier, http://www.thecourier.com
INVESTMENT SCANDAL-OUSTED STAFF
Clashes led to Ohio firings, discrimination claims
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) - Internal pressure was mounting for months ahead of the February firing of the staff of an agency charged with protecting the well-being of Ohio's massive insurance fund for injured workers.
Public records obtained by The Associated Press on Friday reveal frustration among the three staffers of the Ohio Workers' Compensation Council formed in the wake of a sweeping state investment scandal.
Employees complained about the leadership style and priorities of Director Virginia McInerney (MACK'-ih-nuhr-nee). McInerney viewed the staff as often disrespectful, moody and at times uncooperative.
Caught in the cross hairs was an important analysis the office was preparing on a bill aimed at slowing down controversial changes to the Bureau of Workers' Compensation group insurance discounts for employers.
BRIDGE REPAIRS
Repairs to N. Ky.-Ohio bridges almost complete
NEWPORT, Ky. (AP) - Repairs to fix cracks discovered four years ago in two bridges that link northern Kentucky to southern Ohio are expected to be completed this weekend.
A Kentucky Transportation Cabinet spokeswoman says crews began work on the Combs-Hehl Bridges on Wednesday and will continue until Sunday.
Nancy Wood says workers are replacing steel plates in the bridge that inspectors had found in 2006 were cracked. The Kentucky Enquirer reported Friday that some of those plates had been replaced in 2008, but they also had problems.
Now, workers are replacing 10 of the steel plates.
Wood says when the repairs are complete, the cabinet will lift a ban on loads over 40 tons.
During the weekend, portions of the two spans will be closed at varying times.
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Information from: The Kentucky Enquirer, http://www.nky.com
AIRLINE SECURITY
Airport body scanners spreading across US
BOSTON (AP) - The Transportation Security Administration is spreading airport body-scanner technology across the country.
A TSA official said Friday that units will be fielded next week in Chicago, and in the coming months at airports in Columbus and Cincinnati and seven other cities.
They are among 150 machines bought with money from the federal stimulus package signed into law by President Barack Obama last year.
Three of the new machines are going online at Boston's Logan International Airport on Monday.
Deployment of the machines was announced in the fall, before a Nigerian allegedly tried to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day with explosives concealed in his underwear.
But that event highlighted the need for additional security in the U.S. aviation system.
SCLC WOES
Meeting deepens rift in civil rights group
ATLANTA (AP) - Several board members of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference say they will meet this weekend in the group's hometown and could oust their embattled chairman and treasurer who are both under state, federal and internal investigation over allegations of financial mismanagement.
Saturday's meeting comes on the heels of a Dayton, Ohio, executive board meeting last month where members pledged their support of Chairman Raleigh Trammell and Treasurer Spiver Gordon - and on the eve of the 45th anniversary of "Bloody Sunday," a watershed moment in the civil rights movement central to the SCLC's history.
The group is also convening over the objection of members of the executive board, who say the meeting is unconstitutional and unsanctioned by the national organization
BOYS TOWN-OHIO TEEN
Ohio teen tries to start new life in Boys Town
CANTON, Ohio (AP) - A troubled Ohio teen has spent the last year turning his life around at Nebraska's famed Boys Town.
Zion Ford was given the chance to go to the facility in Omaha by his parole officer, working with a Stark County Family Court judge in Canton. They wanted to get him off a path that had taken him from skipping school to smoking marijuana to juvenile detention.
Ford is now 18 and an honor student who's scheduled to graduate from the Boys Town program in May. The odds had been against him. His father was murdered around 10 years ago, his mother is in prison, and he and seven siblings were being raised by a grandmother.
His grandmother says Ford's experience at Boys Town is having a positive impact on his brothers.
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Information from: The Repository, http://www.cantonrep.com
(Copyright 2010 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
AP-NY-03-06-10 0130EST
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