Outlier Counties: Melvin Bonnell Seeks New Trial After Defense Discovers Evidence That Cuyahoga County Prosecutors Had Withheld for Decades

Ohio death-row pris­on­er Melvin Bonnell (pic­tured) has asked the Ohio Supreme Court to vacate his con­vic­tion and death sen­tence after his lawyers dis­cov­ered phys­i­cal evi­dence from his case that Cuyahoga County pros­e­cu­tors had repeat­ed­ly insist­ed since the mid-1990s had been lost or destroyed. 

Bonnell was sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed February 12, 2020, but received a reprieve in December 2019 because of what Governor Mike DeWine described as ​“ongo­ing prob­lems” in obtain­ing exe­cu­tion drugs. Saying that Cuyahoga County pros­e­cu­tors had delib­er­ate­ly ​“deceived this Court and the low­er courts” for years, Bonnell’s lawyers called on Ohio’s high court on March 30, 2020 to dis­qual­i­fy the county’s pros­e­cu­tors from fur­ther involve­ment in the case because of their ​“egre­gious” mis­con­duct and to grant Bonnell a new trial.

Cuyahoga County is one of the 2% of U.S. coun­ties that col­lec­tive­ly account for a major­i­ty of the nation’s death-row pris­on­ers and imposed more death sen­tences in 2018 – 2019 than any oth­er coun­ty in the U.S. Previously the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office was impli­cat­ed in with­hold­ing excul­pa­to­ry evi­dence in the case of Joe D’Ambrosio, who was wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death in 1989. County pros­e­cu­tors con­tin­ued to hide that evi­dence and oppose D’Ambrosio’s release for anoth­er two decades. He was final­ly exon­er­at­ed from death row in 2012.

In February 2020, as a result of a new rule adopt­ed by Ohio’s courts in 2017, Bonnell’s lawyers were able to obtain access to four file box­es that the prosecutor’s office claimed con­tained only doc­u­ments relat­ed to the case, not any evi­dence from the crime itself. Despite years of insis­tence by pros­e­cu­tors that they had searched the box­es, as well as evi­dence lock­ers and oth­er stor­age areas, for bul­lets and shell cas­ings from the 1987 mur­der of Robert Bunner, the defense attor­neys quick­ly found three envelopes con­tain­ing exact­ly the phys­i­cal evi­dence they had asked for. With coun­ty pros­e­cu­tors seek­ing to dis­miss an appeal already pend­ing in the Ohio Supreme Court, Bonnell’s lawyers filed a motion for a new tri­al, writ­ing, ​“Deceiving the courts and Bonnell for years while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly seek­ing to exe­cute him is egre­gious and the high­est form of prosecutorial misconduct.”

Throughout years of Bonnell’s appeals, pros­e­cu­tors had claimed that all phys­i­cal evi­dence from his case, with the excep­tion of a jack­et, had been either lost or destroyed. In 2017, assis­tant pros­e­cut­ing attor­ney Christopher Schroeder rep­re­sent­ed to the court that his office had con­duct­ed an exhaus­tive search for the evi­dence and found noth­ing. ​“I informed [the defense inves­ti­ga­tor] that my office had four box­es of mate­r­i­al relat­ed to the Melvin Bonnell case in our pos­ses­sion, but that those four box­es con­tained only paper doc­u­ments,” he wrote. ​“I reit­er­at­ed that my office had no evi­dence in its pos­ses­sion from Bonnell’s case.” 

The four box­es to which he referred are the very box­es in which Bonnell’s attor­neys found the evi­dence in 2020. 

Schroeder fur­ther informed the court: “[I] also searched the Prosecutor’s Office file and stor­age areas for any evi­dence relat­ed to Bonnell’s case. At [my] direc­tion, employ­ees of the Prosecutor’s Office con­duct­ed sev­er­al checks of the inven­to­ry of the prop­er­ty room locat­ed on the eighth floor of the Prosecutor’s Office. One of those search­es also includ­ed a phys­i­cal inspec­tion of the con­tents of the prop­er­ty room itself for evi­dence. Each of these search­es revealed no evi­dence relat­ed to Bonnell’s case.” 

On March 4 — after Bonnell’s lawyers dis­cov­ered the evi­dence but before the lat­est motion was filed —assis­tant pros­e­cut­ing attor­ney Frank Zeleznikar con­tin­ued to false­ly insist that the evi­dence did not exist. ​“It can­not be dis­put­ed that Bonnell has been aware since at least 1995 that the items in ques­tion were not pre­served for test­ing. … He’s known this evi­dence was lost or destroyed because the State con­tin­u­ous­ly, at every point in the last 24 years, has acknowl­edged that the evi­dence was not pre­served. This has nev­er been a secret. The State nev­er hid it from Bonnell.”

Bonnell’s most recent fil­ings empha­size the brazen nature of the mis­con­duct by the Cuyahoga County pros­e­cu­tors. ​“Damningly, [defense] coun­sel dis­cov­ered the phys­i­cal evi­dence in the Prosecutor’s own file, in the pres­ence of the Prosecutor, with­in the sec­ond of four box­es in the sole pos­ses­sion and con­trol of the Prosecutor’s Office.” the motion explains. Zeleznikar’s mis­con­duct can­not be exe­cused ​“as mere incom­pe­tence or ​‘neg­li­gence,”’ defense attor­neys Kimberly Rigby and Erika LaHote wrote, because “[a] week after han­dling the evi­dence, [Zeleznikar] still attempt­ed to delib­er­ate­ly deceive this Court, as suc­cess­ful­ly accom­plished in the courts below, by stat­ing again that no such evidence exists.”

The motion blast­ed the pros­e­cu­tors for ​“know­ing­ly defraud­ing” defense coun­sel, the Ohio Supreme Court, and the tri­al court as Bonnell’s February 2020 exe­cut­ed date approached. ​“The Prosecutors com­mit­ted one of the most sin­ful things that can be done — they lied and deceived to kill and cloaked them­selves in the unjus­ti­fied right­eous­ness of pro­tect­ing the pub­lic. Due to this egre­gious pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct, [the Ohio Supreme Court] must now intervene.”

A March 30 arti­cle in the Cleveland Scene likened the pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct in Bonnell’s case to mis­con­duct in the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office at the same time in D’Ambrosio’s case. In that case, District Court Judge Kathleen O’Malley wrote: ​“For 20 years, the State held D’Ambrosio on death row, despite wrong­ful­ly with­hold­ing evi­dence that ​‘would have sub­stan­tial­ly increased a rea­son­able juror’s doubt of D’Ambrosio’s guilt.’ Despite being ordered to do so by this Court … the State still failed to turn over all rel­e­vant and mate­r­i­al evi­dence relat­ing to the crime of which D’Ambrosio was con­vict­ed. Then, once it was ordered to pro­vide D’Ambrosio a con­sti­tu­tion­al tri­al or release him with­in 180 days, … the State engaged in sub­stan­tial inequitable con­duct, wrong­ful­ly retain­ing and delay­ing the pro­duc­tion of yet more poten­tial­ly exculpatory evidence.”

“Cases like D’Ambrosio’s and Bonnell’s are vari­a­tions on a theme,” the Scene wrote. ​“The crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem has been slow to acknowl­edge the prob­lems caused by stub­born pros­e­cu­tors who are unwill­ing to revis­it questionable cases.”