Word: trialing
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Ohio are claiming, as they try to ban attorneys from swaying a jury with the power of tears. Butler County assistant prosecutor Jason Phillabaum filed a motion last week calling on the judge to "prohibit" the defense from using emotional appeals to the jury during the upcoming capital-punishment trial of James O'Hara, who is accused of fatally stabbing Stanley Lawson last summer...
Defense attorneys in capital murder cases have often been accused of not working hard enough to help spare their clients the death penalty, in some cases even falling asleep in the middle of a trial. It's not often, though, that lawyers are accused of caring too much - or at least appearing to care too much - about the fate of the defendants they represent...
...filing this motion, Phillabaum and county prosecutor Robin Piper claim to be trying to avoid a repeat of last month's trial of Harvey Johnson, during which they watched tears roll down the cheeks of defense attorney Greg Howard as he asked the jury to spare his client from the death penalty. The jury assented and Johnson, who was convicted of kidnapping and strangling Kiva Gazaway, was sentenced to life imprisonment...
...upcoming O'Hara trial Piper and Phillabaum are once again up against Howard - who has saved the lives of 15 of his previous 19 clients in death-penalty cases. But Phillabaum insists that the anticrying motion is not a reaction to one particular trial or attorney, but the result of witnessing emotional displays "inappropriate[ly]" tipping the scales of justice in many capital cases...
...Howard views the motion as a direct attack on his rights as an attorney. "It's a little ridiculous," he says. "It's because they haven't received a death verdict for so long in this county." David Washington, who will be representing O'Hara alongside Howard when the trial begins on Aug. 9, concurs: "I think the state is absolutely desperate in an attempt to limit what...