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Friday, July 24, 2009
Roger Dean Gillispie to get hearing concerning new evidence about an alternative suspect
DAYTON — Roger Dean Gillispie, twice convicted of raping three women in August 1988, won a partial victory from the Ohio 2nd District Court of Appeals, which found that a Montgomery County Common Pleas judge should have held a hearing to consider new evidence concerning an alternative suspect.
The three-judge panel which included Judges James Brogan, Mike Fain and Jeffrey E. Froelich, rejected Gillispie’s request for a new trial, but ordered Judge A.J. Wagner to hold a hearing concerning the alternative suspect.
That hearing will be far more limited than Gillispie’s attorneys wanted. The appeals court, also rejected Gillispie’s other arguments, finding that Wagner did not err by concluding without a hearing:
— that Gillispie failed to show that allegedly missing campground records and allegedly missing supplemental police reports constituted a violation of discovery rules. — determining that the evidence of alleged witness tampering and the new expert testimony regarding eyewitness identification did not entitle defendant to a new trial.
However, the court found that Gillsipie’s attorneys had presented new evidence regarding the other suspect, and that it was sufficient to require a hearing to “flesh out the evidence” and to determine whether a new trial would be warranted.
The Montgomery County Prosecutor’s Office argued in briefs and at a July 7 hearing before the appeals court that the alternative suspect’s “official presence in this case goes back to the first motion for a new trial” in 1991.
But the appeals court found that Gillispie’s attorneys, which include former Ohio Attorney General Jim Petro and Mark Godsey from the Ohio Innocence Project, did present new evidence about that suspect, including:
— that he has used the name “Roger” to refer to his brother, even though that was not his brother’s name. All three victims said the attacker referred to himself as “Roger.” Gillispie generally goes by his middle name. — that his voice was distinctly authoritative, as described by the victims. — that he has bragged that he was a contract killer. The attacker told two victims, twins who were abducted during the same incident, that he killed people for money. — That the man asked Godsey how the “ladies” described their assailant, before Godsey told him there were multiple victims. — That the man’s photographs are similar to the composites and descriptions by the victims.
In July 2008, Wagner denied Gillispie’s request for a new trial, stating there was “no new admissible evidence” that would meet evidence rules requirements. Wagner ruled from attorneys’ briefs, declining to have a hearing on the issue.
Gillispie, 44, who is serving a 16- to 50-year sentence at the London Correctional Institution, has maintained his innocence. He was convicted of two counts of rape, two counts of gross sexual imposition, two counts of kidnapping and one count of aggravated robbery, according to the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction.
Montgomery County prosecutors and Miami Twp. Police Department investigators remain adamant that Gillispie is guilty. They point to the fact that all three victims identified Gillispie as their attacker, though defense attorneys say that those identifications, made nearly two years after the attacks, were tainted through police practices.
His convictions involve the abductions and sexual assaults against twin sisters from Sidney on Aug. 20, 1988 and of a Harrison Twp. woman on Aug. 5, 1988. All of crimes were investigated by the Miami Twp. Police Department.
His first trial ended with convictions in February 1991. He won a new trial after untested crime scene hairs were found at the Miami Valley Regional Crime Laboratory. Later in 1991, he was re-tried and convicted again. The hairs were later found have come from the twins.
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