Death row inmate appeal partly approved, sent to Trumbull County Court for review

A death row inmate had his appeal partly affirmed by the 11th District Court of Appeals of Ohio. 

The 11th District Court of Appeals has partly appealed the case of Andre Williams, who was sentenced to death for the 1988 murder of George Melnick at his home in Warren.

Williams was also convicted for beating, blinding and attempting to rape George's Wife, Katherine Melnick during a robbery at their home on Wick Street. Williams was put on death row the following year in 1989. 

11th District Judge Mary Jane Trapp wrote that after careful review of the record and law, "we find that the trial court abused its discretion in determining Mr. Williams did not prove intellectual function deficits, significant adaptive deficit and the onset of deficits while he was a minor."

The 11th District judges, including Judges Matt Lynch and Eugene Lucci, have sent the case back to the trial court with specific instructions to re-analyze the case by using the most recent governing law and clinical principals of intellectual disability adopted by Ohio and federal precedent.

Both the 11th District Court of Appeals in 1994 and the Ohio Supreme Court in 1996 upheld the convictions and death sentence, as did other appeals which followed in Ohio and federal courts.

Another hearing has been ordered to be held in Trumbull County Common Pleas Court to determine whether Williams is intellectually disabled and ineligible for the death penalty. 

Earlier this year, William's attorney argued that his IQ scores show that Williams qualifies as intellectually disabled. Some of those tests were taken while Williams was in school - well before the crimes.

They also added that prison records show the same.

“Everyone of those prison records makes reference to Andre Williams being mildly mentally retarded,” Williams' attorney said to the judges in the appeals court. earlier this year.

While the 11th District ordered the case to be re-examined, they also ruled that a 2017 testimony from Dr. Thomas Gazle, who told the trial court Williams was not disabled in his opinion - could not be struck from records.

Additionally, the Trumbull Prosecutor's Office filed an appeal with Ohio Supreme Court looking to have the trial court's original decision.

"We respectfully disagree with the appellate court's factual and legal analysis," the office said in a written statement. "This office believes that the fifty-page opinion, rendered by now retired Judge W. Wyatt McKay, who was also the trial judge in the 1989 case against Williams, concluding that the defendant was not intellectually disabled, thoroughly reviewed the evidence and delivered a well-reasoned, factually supported and legally sufficient opinion."