07 February 2018 :

A 3-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ordered that Danny Hill, 51, Black, no longer be eligible for the death penalty for the brutal 1985 murder 12-year-old Raymond Fife, White. The panel, based in Cincinnati, affirmed Hill's conviction but reversed the decision of U.S. District Judge John Adams of Akron, who affirmed Hill's death sentence. The federal appellate court said earlier rulings by Ohio courts were wrong when they said Hill was not too intellectually disabled to be executed. She noted the long list of judges who affirmed the decision of Visiting Judge Thomas P. Curran, who ruled in 2008 in Trumbull County Common Pleas Court that Hill was not too disabled to be put to death. The decision says the 6th Circuit panel found that Ohio courts have unreasonably applied the U.S. Supreme Court's 3-part standard for determining intellectual disability. All 3 parts must be present for someone to be declared too disabled for the death penalty. The ruling says there is agreement Hill's IQ score of between 48 and 71 means he "easily meets the 1st element of the clinical definition of intellectual disability." But the federal court also thinks Hill meets the definition of intellectual disability on the 2 other measurements - adaptive abilities and whether his deficits manifested themselves before he turned 18. Earlier judges disagreed Hill was intellectually disabled in the last 2 areas. Hill was convicted during a 1986 trial before 3 judges of common pleas court and sentenced to death. Hill, then 18, and Timothy Combs, then 17, attacked the boy Sept. 10, 1985, as he rode his bicycle along a path. He was beaten, raped and set on fire. He died 2 days later.