On September 19 the Ohio Court of Appeals affirmed a low­er court’s dis­missal of all charges against Thomas Keenan, a for­mer death row inmate sen­tenced to death for a 1988 mur­der. The appeals court also barred the state from retry­ing Keenan. His co-defen­dant, Joseph D’Ambrosio, was ful­ly exon­er­at­ed in 2012 based on sim­i­lar state mis­con­duct to that found in Keenan’s tri­al. Keenan’s con­vic­tion was over­turned by a U.S. District Court in 2012 because the state had with­held vital evi­dence from the defense. After spend­ing near­ly 20 years on death row, Keenan was released, but the state said it intend­ed to retry him. However, the tri­al court found the state’s mis­con­duct so offen­sive that it pre­clud­ed any fur­ther pros­e­cu­tion, not­ing that ​“in the inter­est of jus­tice and fair­ness, the harm done to defen­dant Keenan has been so egre­gious that this is the extra­or­di­nary case where the court has no oth­er option but to grant the motion to dis­miss.” In uphold­ing that deci­sion, the Court of Appeals said, ​“The degra­da­tion of this case began 25 years ago, when the desire to obtain a con­vic­tion over­whelmed the state’s respon­si­bil­i­ty to seek the fullest truth of that day in September 1988.” 

The state can appeal the Court of Appeals rul­ing to the Ohio Supreme Court. If the lat­est deci­sion stands, Keenan could be added to DPIC’s Innocence List.

(Ohio v. Keenan, Court of Appeals, September 19, 2013). See Innocence and Arbitrariness.

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