Prosecutors can again seek the death penalty against a man convicted of raping and fatally beating a 19-year-old woman in 1993 and dumping her body in an abandoned building in Marion County, a federal appeals panel ruled Wednesday.
Maurice Mason, 49, had argued that state prosecutors shouldn’t be allowed to seek the death penalty against him because they missed a filing deadline after an appeals court threw out his death sentence in 2008. He also said that doing so would amount to double jeopardy.
A three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed with him Wednesday, finding that although the state did miss a six-month deadline to pursue a death sentence against Mason, doing so was not enough to preclude them from starting the process again.
The panel also rejected Mason’s double-jeopardy argument, saying there had been no finding that the prosecution had failed to prove its case at trial.
Mason’s attorney didn’t return a call seeking comment.
Robin Dennis’ mostly nude body was found inside an abandoned building in rural Marion County on Feb. 13, 1993. She had been beaten with a nail-covered board, had multiple skull fractures and semen was found in her vagina that forensic analysts said at trial matched Mason.
The appeals panel gave the state a new six-month deadline to pursue the death penalty against Mason, who is being housed at Ross Correctional Institution in Chillicothe, about 45 miles south of Columbus.
At the time of this posting, the Ohio attorney general’s office had not announced if or when they may start the process of trying to get Mason sentenced to death.
In a split decision, the same panel of the 6th Circuit threw out Mason’s death sentence in 2008, ruling 2-1 that he had poor legal help during the sentencing phase of his 1994 trial.
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To read the complete decision handed down by the Appeals Court, click here.
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