Brad Gessner, chief counsel for the Summit County Prosecutor’s Office, displayed a letter on his office door from the last person sentenced to death in the county for a long time after the trial had concluded.
The letter from Shawn Eric Ford Jr., convicted of the April 2013 bludgeoning deaths of a New Franklin couple, urged former Summit County Common Pleas Court Judge Tom Parker to sentence him to death. Ford said if he was sentenced to life in prison, he would “kill everybody” when he got to prison. He said he wasn’t sorry and that he hoped Parker died soon and that someone killed the judge’s family.
“I hope that makes you sentence me to death,” Ford said in the rambling, expletive-filled letter to Parker, who followed the recommendation of a jury and sentenced Ford to death. “… F*** life and f*** everybody.”
Gessner points to Ford’s letter as an example of why he thinks the death penalty is needed in Ohio, and why his office still pursues capital punishment.
“These are the people we need protection from,” Gessner said. “I think it’s a horrible thing, but we have to have it. I’d prefer he [Ford] never killed anyone.”
Gessner, who has been with the prosecutor’s office since 2001 when Prosecutor Sherri Bevan Walsh first took office, knows his office’s track record in capital cases by heart: 500 murder cases, 37 indicted with death specifications and nine sentenced to death, or about 2 percent.
Gessner, however, also is aware of the criticism by several of the county’s prominent defense attorneys who argue Summit County is wasting money by seeking the death penalty when juries appear increasingly unwilling to recommend this sentence, instead opting for life in prison. Of the county’s past 10 capital cases, only one resulted in a death sentence.
Gessner said his office is following Ohio law when pursuing the death penalty — a punishment reserved for the “worst of the worst.” He said the death penalty is more about punishment and protection than prevention.
“I don’t think it is a deterrent,” he said. “I don’t think they care about the law.”
History
Gessner’s first experience with the death penalty was as an assistant prosecutor in Mahoning County in January 1989.
Warren Spivey was due in court for the rape of a 19-year-old girl, but he didn’t show up. Gessner sought a warrant for Spivey only to learn he already had one.
Spivey had broken into the home of a woman in her mid-50s who was sitting at her kitchen table reading the Bible. He tried to rape her, beat her to death, stole her car and was found hiding in the basement of another home. He was convicted and is on Ohio’s death row.
Another case that has stuck with Gessner involves Ray Howard, who committed a crime in 1979 when Ohio’s death penalty hadn’t been reinstated. Howard was convicted of stealing a man’s possessions, slitting his throat and leaving him in a car to bleed to death. He was sentenced to life in prison, with the possibility of parole after 15 years.
Gessner said Howard has a list of people he wants to kill if he is ever released from prison, and the prosecutor is No. 81 on the list. He is concerned every time Howard comes up for parole. Howard will be eligible again in a few years.
“I hope he dies in prison,” Gessner said.
Process
Gessner said his office does a thorough review before deciding whether to pursue the death penalty.
The case is assigned to one of five supervisors in the criminal division for review. The prosecutors then have a roundtable discussion about the case and whether it meets Ohio’s requirements for the death penalty. They meet with the detectives and the victim’s family members and talk to Walsh.
“We try to be very careful,” Gessner said.
When prosecutors decide to pursue the death penalty, the case is presented to a grand jury, which decides whether the potential penalty is warranted and which of the factors in state law the crime matches.
Eric Hendon, the defendant in Summit County’s last death penalty case involving a triple murder in Barberton, was indicted under the specifications for purposely killing two or more people and for taking a life while committing a robbery, Gessner said.
“We want to make cases as clear within the law as possible when we charge them,” Gessner said.
Hendon was convicted last year but received a sentence of life in prison without parole instead of the death penalty.
Cost
Death penalty cases are more expensive than noncapital murder cases.
Capital cases require a larger pool of jurors, last longer and involve more experts for both prosecutors and defense attorneys.
A Beacon Journal analysis of the costs of the Hendon case and the Deandre Baskerville case, which was a noncapital aggravated murder case also tried last year, found the Hendon case was nearly 14 times more expensive than the Baskerville case. The fees for the two sets of attorneys who handled the Hendon trial alone totaled nearly $125,000.
Since 2001, when Walsh first became prosecutor, the most death penalty cases in a single year in Summit County were in 2006 and 2014, with five each year. The last Summit County defendant sentenced to death was Shawn Eric Ford Jr., who was tried in 2014 and received the death penalty in 2015. Hendon’s case was the lone capital case in 2016, and the county currently has no pending death penalty cases.
Summit County’s large number of death penalty trials in 2014 led to criticism of the additional expense, with the cost of the county’s indigent defense running $400,000 over budget that year. Ohioans to Stop Executions, a statewide anti-death penalty group, noted in a recent report that Summit had no new death penalty cases in 2015 and questioned whether the “budget-breaking overruns of 2014 have contributed to decisions not to seek death.” The report also pointed to a disparity between Ohio counties, with only a handful pursuing capital cases.
Gessner said the crime — not the cost — dictates whether the death penalty is pursued in Summit County. He noted, however, that the expense of capital cases is one of the reasons for the current discussion about whether a public defender’s office should be created for felony cases in the county, rather than the current method of appointing defense attorneys to handle these cases. The prosecutor and county executive’s offices are studying whether this switch could save money while maintaining or improving the quality of defense.
Gessner pointed out that Don Malarcik and Brian Pierce, two of Hendon’s attorneys, made nearly $100,000 in attorneys’ fees for the case.
In Summit County, an assistant prosecutor’s yearly salary is $60,000 to $70,000. Prosecutors don’t make extra for the additional time they put into capital cases.
“Nothing they [Malarcik and Pierce] did changes what Eric Hendon did and the threat to society he is and will be as long as he is taking breaths,” Gessner said. “I’m happy if Eric Hendon is behind bars for the rest of his natural life.”
Stephanie Warsmith can be reached at 330-996-3705, swarsmith@thebeaconjournal.com and on Twitter: @swarsmithabj .