Judge Anthony Donofrio has denied the request of a man convicted of murdering a Youngstown State University student in 1985 a new trial.

Bennie Adams was convicted and sentenced for the 1985 murder of Gina Tenney, a student at YSU. He was convicted on one count of Aggravated Felony Murder and a single accompanying death penalty specification.

Later, his death sentence was revoked and he was re-sentenced to life in prison with a chance of parole after 20 years.

While Adams was always a suspect in Tenney's murder, DNA testing and the analysis of evidence Youngstown Police kept for over 20 years was crucial in convicting him in this case.

Tenney's murder was committed in the course of Adams also committing rape, aggravated burglary, aggravated robbery and/or kidnapping. 

Years later, Adams filed a petition for Habeas Corpus in federal court, arguing that an affidavit signed by one of the jurors indicated that a number of jurors learned of his prior rape conviction before the case concluded.

He was previously convicted of an unrelated rape in Boardman back in 1985, but evidence of that conviction was not present during the murder trial.

In February of 2023, the federal court directed the trial court to a hearing pursuant to Remmer vs. United States to determine if any of the jurors learned of this prior rape conviction before the case had concluded.

After several depositions and a day-long hearing, the court found that none of the jurors learned of this conviction before they were discharged of their duties. As a result, Adams' life sentence still stands.