Ohio Supreme Court sets execution date for Trumbull County murderer

COLUMBUS, Ohio – The Ohio Supreme Courtroom on Wednesday set July 22, 2026, because the execution date for Danny Lee Hill, a Trumbull County man convicted of murdering a 12-year-old boy in 1985.

Nonetheless, it’s unclear whether or not Hill can be put to demise on that date – or in any respect – given Ohio’s years-long difficulties with acquiring lethal-injection medicine. Gov. Mike DeWine has repeatedly pushed again execution dates for a number of death-row inmates whereas in workplace

Hill, 55, was convicted of aggravated homicide, rape, kidnapping, and arson in 1986 for beating, sexually assaulting, strangling and burning Raymond Fife of Warren.

His demise sentence follows years of appeals to state and federal courts. A 3-judge sixth U.S. Circuit Courtroom of Appeals court docket panel dominated in 2020 that Hill’s execution could be unconstitutional, referring to accounts that he struggles with primary each day obligations comparable to remembering to take a bathe or brush his tooth. Nonetheless, the complete sixth Circuit voted 9-7 to uphold Hill’s demise sentence, and the U.S. Supreme Courtroom declined to listen to the case.

Hill will get a clemency listening to a couple of month earlier than his execution, which means the date of the execution might nonetheless be pushed again.

Trumbull County prosecutors requested the Supreme Courtroom to make sure that Hill’s execution is definitely carried out, stating in a authorized temporary that it’s “troublesome to fathom that the good State of Ohio is unable to obtain execution medicine.” The prosecutors known as on the court docket to launch an investigation into why executions haven’t been held in Ohio since 2018 and the way they’ll resume.

In 2015, state lawmakers briefly thought-about reviving execution strategies that have been beforehand shunned, together with the electrical chair and firing squads. However such concepts have gained no traction till now within the GOP-dominated legislature.