15 July 2019 :

Life sentence without parole for former death row inmate Kelly Foust brings end to long legal battle. A panel of three Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judges sentenced Foust to in 2002. The death sentence overturned on appeal on Aug. 25, 2011 (see). Foust, now 42, White, struck a deal with Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Michael O’Malley’s office to avoid facing the death penalty once again. On March 31, 2001, Foust murdered 54-year-old Jose Coreano in his Cleveland home. Foust had gone to the house in search of his estranged girlfriend, who sometimes stayed with the Coreano family. Foust had previously broken into the Coreano home. Foust attacked Mr. Coreano while he was asleep and struck him in the head with a claw hammer. Afterwards, Foust repeatedly raped Mr. Coreano's 17-year-old daughter, tied her to the bathtub and left her in the house he had set on fire, but she escaped. Foust provided a detailed confession to the detectives from the Cleveland Police Department. Foust agreed to spend the rest of his life in prison and not to appeal any aspect of his conviction or sentence in exchange for O’Malley’s office dropping its pursuit to have the state execute him. Common Pleas Court Judges Cassandra Collier-Williams, Hollie Gallagher and William McGinty accepted the agreement and imposed the life sentence. The 25-minute hearing brought a close to a protracted legal battle over Foust’s re-sentencing that stretched over 8 years. After his imprisonment, DNA testing linked Foust to at least three other rape cases in 1998, 2000 and 2001. He pleaded guilty to two counts of sexual battery and one count of gross sexual imposition and in 2016 Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Cassandra Collier Williams sentenced him to five years.