Ohio Voids Woman’s Death Sentence

The Ohio Supreme Court on Wednesday threw out the death sentence of the first woman condemned since the state resumed executions in 1999.

The court unanimously ruled that the trial judge had allowed a prosecutor to be involved in preparing his opinion in sentencing Donna M. Roberts, 62, in violation of Ohio law.

The court let Roberts’ murder conviction stand but ordered the trial court to resentence her. The death sentence remains an option, the Supreme Court said.

Roberts is one of two women on Ohio’s death row. She was the fifth woman sentenced to death since Ohio reinstated the death penalty in 1981, but the sentences of the other four were commuted. There are 193 men facing the death penalty.

The majority opinion, by Justice Maureen O’Connor, said the trial court’s delegation of any amount of responsibility in the sentencing opinion did not comply with state law.

“Nor does it comport with our firm belief that the consideration and imposition of death are the most solemn of all the duties that are imposed on a judge,” O’Connor wrote. “The scales of justice may not be weighted even slightly by one with an interest in the ultimate outcome.”

A call to the office of Judge John M. Stuard, who handed down the death sentence, was not answered Wednesday.

Roberts was convicted in 2003 of aggravated murder in the death of her ex-husband, Robert Fingerhut, two years earlier. The judge accepted the jury’s death penalty recommendation.

The Supreme Court has upheld the death sentence for Nathaniel Jackson, 34, who also was convicted in Fingerhut’s death.

Prosecutors said that Jackson and Roberts were having an affair and that Fingerhut was shot in the head when he arrived home so they could collect a $550,000 life insurance policy.

Trumbull County Prosecutor Dennis Watkins said his office would not take part in any resentencing proceedings.