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Supreme Court Affirms Death Sentence for Rape and Murder of Akron 12-Year-Old
2004-1554. State v. Craig, 2006-Ohio-4571.
Summit C.P. No. 2003-06-1638. Judgment affirmed in part and vacated in part, and cause remanded.
Moyer, C.J., Resnick, Pfeifer, Lundberg Stratton, O'Connor, O'Donnell and Lanzinger, JJ., concur.
Opinion: http://www.supremecourtofohio.gov/rod/newpdf/0/2006/2006-Ohio-4571.pdf
(Sept. 20, 2006) The Supreme Court of Ohio has affirmed the convictions and death sentence of Donald Craig for the aggravated murder of 12-year-old Roseanna Davenport of Akron. Davenport was abducted while walking home from the home of a friend, raped and strangled in February 1996. Craig was the live-in boyfriend of the friend's mother.
Davenport's family reported her missing a few hours after she failed to return home and searched the neighborhood for days without results. Eight days after her disappearance, Davenport's body was found in the basement of a vacant apartment building near the Lindsay residence. Her body was fully clothed, but medical examiners found bruising and other evidence that her hands and ankles had been bound and that she had been sexually assaulted before being strangled to death. Semen samples were recovered from the body.
Six days later, a municipal court judge issued an order requested by the city prosecutor directing Craig to submit to the taking of samples of his blood, hair and saliva for DNA testing. Craig refused to comply with the order. The next day a search warrant authorizing the seizure of blood, hair and saliva samples from Craig was issued along with a warrant citing Craig with contempt of court and authorizing his arrest. Craig was arrested and held in jail overnight. At a hearing the next day, he was advised that he would remain in contempt and in jail until he provided the required blood and tissue samples. Craig provided the requested samples and was released from custody. The genetic material recovered from the victim proved insufficient for a forensic examiner to conduct DNA comparison testing using the technology then available.
In the absence of DNA evidence, the crime remained unsolved until 2002, when a police “cold case” unit was able to employ new procedures to re-test the DNA of material recovered from Davenport's body. Those tests identified Craig as her attacker. Craig was indicted, tried and convicted in Summit County Common Pleas Court of kidnapping, rape and aggravated murder with death penalty specifications, and sentenced to death.
Writing for a unanimous Supreme Court in today's decision, Justice Paul E. Pfeifer affirmed the trial court's judgment and Craig's death sentence for aggravated murder, rejecting 12 of 13 assignments of trial court error asserted by Craig as grounds to overturn his convictions or reduce his sentence.
With regard to Craig's claim that DNA test results should have been excluded from evidence at his trial because his blood, saliva and hair samples were obtained unconstitutionally, Justice Pfeifer wrote that the judge who issued the search warrant for those materials had reasonable grounds to believe that testing of the samples would link Craig to Davenport's rape and murder.
“The affidavit stated that Roseanna Davenport had been at Craig's residence in the weeks before she disappeared, that her body had been found in an unoccupied apartment near Craig's residence, and that when police questioned Craig after Davenport's body had been found, he ‘denied knowing Davenport even though she stayed at his house shortly before her death,'” wrote Justice Pfeifer. “The affidavit also stated that Davenport had been raped, that semen samples had been recovered during the autopsy, and that those samples had been sent to BCI for testing. Finally, the affidavit stated that Craig had been accused of sexual contact with minor victims on at least three separate occasions and that Craig had spent time in a correctional facility. … The facts in the affidavit gave the judge issuing the warrant a substantial basis for concluding that a fair probability existed that comparison of Craig's hair, blood, and saliva with the semen evidence would identify Craig as the perpetrator. Thus, the affidavit supported the determination of probable cause.”
Justice Pfeifer said the Court also found no merit in Craig's claim that the trial court committed reversible error when it admitted the testimony of a prosecution witness, Lavail Calhoun, who testified that she had been abducted, tied up and raped by Craig in a vacant house five years before the Davenport murder. Although Calhoun, who was 17 at the time, reported the attack to police and testified before a grand jury, no indictment was returned in the case and Craig was arrested but never prosecuted.
Noting that “other acts” evidence is admissible to establish the identity of a perpetrator, or to show common elements or a pattern of behavior linking the defendant's past actions to a crime of which he is currently accused, Justice Pfeifer said Calhoun's testimony established the common features that both Calhoun and Davenport were young girls, that both were taken to vacant buildings where they were bound before being sexually assaulted.
“The evidence of the first rape tends to show the identity of the perpetrator of the second. Therefore, evidence of Craig's prior rape of Calhoun meets the requirements for admissibility in order to show proof of identity, as permitted by Evid.R. 404(B),” wrote Justice Pfeifer. … “Calhoun's testimony also helped to establish Craig's motive for murdering Roseanna to escape detection or apprehension. See Evid.R. 404(B). After Calhoun was raped and released, she immediately notified police that Craig had raped her, and he was arrested. The evidence supports the state's argument that Craig killed Davenport so that she could not notify the police that he had kidnapped and raped her.”
Rejecting Craig's contention that the five-year gap between the attack on Calhoun and the killing of Davenport was too great an expanse of time to establish a pattern of behavior, Justice Pfeifer cited a 3rd District Court of Appeals decision, State v. DePina (1984) which held that when other-acts evidence is offered to show a pattern of conduct, “‘(t)he key to the probative value of such conduct lies in its peculiar character rather than its proximity to the event at issue.' We conclude that the five-year separation in time between these two incidents does not preclude the admissibility of the evidence.”
In conducting its independent review of aggravating and mitigating factors in the case, Justice Pfeifer said that the Court found nothing in the nature or circumstances of Craig's “horrific crime” or in his character to mitigate against imposition of the death penalty. He concluded that each aggravating factor outweighed the mitigating factors in the case beyond a reasonable doubt, and therefore the trial court's sentence of death on the aggravated murder counts was appropriate.
The Court upheld objections raised by Craig to the procedures and sentencing ranges applied by the trial court in imposing additional sentences for his separate kidnapping and rape convictions. Noting that these crimes were committed on Feb. 28 or March 1, 1996, Justice Pfeifer said a review of the trial court's sentencing order on the rape and kidnapping charges showed that the judge had followed provisions adopted as part of S.B. 2, a major overhaul of Ohio criminal sentencing guidelines that did not take effect until July 1, 1996. The Court therefore vacated Craig's sentences for rape and kidnapping, and remanded the case to the trial court for re-sentencing on those counts under the statutory guidelines that were in place at the time the offenses were committed.
Contacts
Richard Kasay, 330.643.2800, for the State of Ohio and Summit County prosecutor's office.
Ray Nathan, 330.253.7171, for Donald Craig.
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