Bennie Adams convicted for death of YSU student
YOUNGSTOWN — The 7th District Court of Appeals last week affirmed the decision of Judge Anthony Donofrio of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court when the judge found no reason to grant Bennie Adams a new trial in the 1985 killing of 19-year-old YSU student Gina Tenney of Ashtabula.
Adams, 66, is serving 20 years to life in prison for Tenney’s murder. He comes up for parole again in June 2028. Tenney was Adams’ upstairs neighbor in an Ohio Avenue duplex on Youngstown’s North Side.
The appeals panel — Carol Robb, Mark Hanni and Kately Dickey — unanimously ruled Donofrio ruled correctly in each of the areas contested by Adams’ attorneys from the Ohio Public Defender’s Office.
The first was the question of whether Donofrio improperly limited what evidence Adams was allowed to present at a hearing in June 2023 that was ordered by U.S. District Court Judge James S. Gwin.
Adams’ attorneys argued that their expert witness, Dr. Bryan Edelman, should have been allowed to testify as to whether jurors were exposed to prejudicial pretrial publicity in the local news media, but the appeals panel found Donofrio committed no error in finding that Edelman’s testimony was not relevant after the questioning of jurors in the case in June 2023 showed that none were aware of prejudicial information prior to finding Adams guilty of Tenney’s murder and recommending that Adams get the death penalty.
The ruling states that “none of the jurors testified that they knew about (Adams’ earlier) rape conviction before reaching their verdicts except” one male juror whose statements to authorities after the trial caused the hearing to be held.
Even that juror testified that the information about Adams’ earlier conviction “did not impact his decision because he had already voted to convict and in favor of (the death penalty) before he heard about the prior rape offense,” the new ruling states.
The second major area reviewed by the appeals court was whether Donofrio erred in deciding that all of the jurors’ testimony was consistent with each other and more credible than the juror who raised the question of whether jurors knew too much about Adams’ earlier convictions.
Adams’ attorneys argued testimony at the hearing in June 2023 did not support Donofrio’s ruling that the male juror who raised questions was less credible than other jurors.
The appeals panel cited case law finding that determining the credibility of a witness is “primarily for the finder of fact because the jury or (judge) is best able to view the witnesses and observe their demeanor, including voice inflections and body language.”
In this case, Donofrio ruled the male juror who raised the issues stated that “at least three jurors knew of Adams’ prior conviction during the trial,” but he only “surmised the because a blonde juror told him ‘We were dying to tell you’ ” earlier about Adams having an earlier rape conviction, the appeals ruling states.
“However, as (the male juror) acknowledged, this is mere speculation. Many of the jurors reported learning of this information after the trial was concluded.”
The testimony that a blonde female juror told the male juror they were “dying to tell” the male juror about Adams’ earlier rape conviction “does not necessarily indicate that the blonde juror knew this information … for an extended duration,” the appeals ruling states.
“We acknowledge that the jurors’ individual testimony was not largely consistent regarding their individual memories about the trial, who they spoke with and where and when they ate. The discrepancies, no doubt, are due to the passage of time,” the appeals panel ruled.
“They likely misremembered the details since the trial occurred in October 2008, and the hearing was more than 14 years later. Discrepancies likely also flowed from the fact that certain jurors learned of the information (about Adams’ earlier rape conviction) differently, and it is common knowledge that individuals recall things differently.”
During the jurors’ testimony, many said they learned about Adams’ earlier conviction from court officials after their service as a juror was over.
All of the testimony of the jurors was consistent on whether they learned of Adams’ earlier rape conviction, the appeals panel found, except for the one male juror, the appeals panel found. All said they learned of it after they reached a guilty verdict and recommended the death penalty — except for the male juror.
But Donofrio “evidently did not believe his testimony or sequence of events.” But Donofrio, “as trier of fact, was in the best position” to determine whose testimony was the most credible, the ruling states.
Tenney was a YSU sophomore who complained just before she was killed that Adams was harassing her, staring through her window and trying to talk to her. Adams was convicted of her aggravated murder following a trial.
Tenney’s body was found by a muskrat trapper Dec. 29, 1985, floating in the Mahoning River under the West Avenue bridge in Youngstown. An autopsy found she was raped and strangled before she was thrown into the river, according to Vindicator archives.
Mahoning County Prosecutor Gina DeGenova announced the appeals ruling in a news release, stating that Adams also was convicted of a death penalty specification in Tenney’s death that found that Tenney’s murder was committed in the course of committing rape, aggravated burglary, aggravated robbery and /or kidnapping. His death sentence was vacated by the Ohio Supreme Court, and he was resentenced to 20 years to life in prison.
The reason Donofrio had to hold the hearing a year ago was because Gwin ruled in a federal habeas corpus filing by Adams that Donofrio should hold a hearing to determine whether any jurors in Adams’ trial learned of Adams’ prior rape conviction before his murder trial had concluded. If so, Donofrio was told to determine whether any jurors were biased because of that prior rape conviction.
An affidavit by the male juror alleged that shortly after the jury recommended the death penalty, a female juror approached the male juror and informed him that Adams had served a 17-year prison sentence for a prior rape conviction, the prosecutor’s news release states.
2023 HEARING
During the June 2023 hearing, Donofrio heard from 15 of the 16 jurors in the 2008 Adams trial. One had since died, according to Vindicator files.
The man said during the June 2023 hearing that a specific female juror told him near the end of the trial that Adams had been in prison for rape previously.
“He suggested she was trying to help him and make him feel better,” Donofrio’s ruling stated. The male juror had been struggling with the decision on whether to vote for Adams to get the death penalty and the female juror was “worried about his mental well-being,” the ruling stated.
The female juror told this to the male juror after the jury had voted for the death penalty but before the verdict had been announced in open court, the male juror said.
But when the female juror he mentioned was asked about it at the June 2023 hearing, she said she “does not know how she would have had that information to be able to pass it on to somebody else, and that is not something she would have done,” Donofrio’s ruling stated.
The female juror said she had no memory of the male juror and said she did not remember having the conversation the male juror said they had. She said she did not know at any point during the trial or penalty phase of the trial the reason why Adams had been previously in prison.
She also testified that she would not have made such remarks because she was “not a social person and certainly was no more sociable 15 years ago when she was (so young) and in a room with mostly older … jurors to whom she did not relate,” according to Donofrio’s ruling.
She said the first time she learned that Adams had previously been in prison was after the trial was over, when former county assistant prosecutor Dawn Cantalamessa told jurors about it. She said she found the male juror’s comments untruthful.
The male juror testified to being told by another female juror that Adams had “been in jail for another rape. I don’t know if she said the number of years, but it was a lot of years. And she said, ‘We were dying to tell you,'” the ruling stated.
This conversation took place at a dinner attended by about 10 jurors after they left the courthouse after the trial and penalty phases were complete, the male juror said. He described the female juror by her hair color and age, which was different from the other female juror.
He testified that he surmised that three jurors knew about Adams’ previous rape conviction because the second female juror told him at the restaurant after the trial and penalty phase were over that “we were all dying to tell you (about the prior conviction),” Donofrio’s ruling stated.
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