COLUMBUS – In a unanimous decision, the Ohio Supreme Court Wednesday upheld the state’s death penalty sentencing process, saying that is different in critical ways from a Florida sentencing scheme struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court.
In a case stemming from a 1993 murder, the state’s high court unanimously rejected a Marion County man’s challenge, which he claimed violated an accused murderer’s rights to a trial by jury under the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
“Ohio law, in contrast [to Florida’s], requires a jury to find the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of at least one aggravating circumstance…before the matter proceeds to the penalty phase, when the jury can recommend a death sentence. Ohio’s scheme differs from Florida’s because Ohio requires the jury to make this specific and critical finding,” Justice Patrick Fischer wrote in the court’s opinion.
The ruling affirmed the death penalty of Maurice Mason who was convicted of the rape and murder of Robbin Dennis in 1993.
Mason had won the right to challenge his original death sentence in 2008 and when his case went before the Marion County Common Pleas Court in 2016, he argued the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2016 decision, which invalidated Florida’s death penalty sentencing process, applies to Ohio.
The trial court agreed and Marion County prosecutors appealed the decision. Later that same year, the Third District Court of Appeals reversed the decision and affirmed the death sentence.
Fischer explained that, unlike procedures in Florida and other states, an Ohio jury makes every necessary finding to impose a death sentence and that satisfies the Sixth Amendment requirements.
Ohio’s death penalty sentencing procedure requires that a defendant be convicted by a jury of aggravated murder and at least one specification that carries the death penalty, such as murder during commission of a rape as in Mason’s case. The jury must also find beyond a reasonable doubt that aggravating circumstances that carry the death penalty outweigh mitigating circumstances and recommend the death penalty to the trial judge who, unlike judges in Florida and Arizona where procedures were struck down, cannot impose a sentence greater that that recommended by the jury.