Prosecutor Michael Gmoser and Howe’s family say yes.
“Before the beginning of this trial I said I wanted the facts of this case fully disclosed to the citizens of Butler County,” Gmoser said. “I wanted the county to know I was going to be relying on a jury of Butler County citizens to make a determination with respect to the penalty in this case.
“I wanted full accountability. We received that in the first phase of this trial and in the penalty phase,” he said. “Obviously, the jury decided that there were mitigating factors that would spare this man’s life.”
The jury took very little time reaching its conclusions in the case. It took less than two hours for them to find French guilty and an hour and 20 minutes to settle on his punishment.
Butler County Common Pleas Judge Charles Pater will formally sentence French, 57, of Berea, Ky., on Monday.
“The county needed to know what happened here,” Gmoser said. “It would have been a tremendous mistake not to take this case to trial and have a cross section of citizens decide.”
While the exact cost of the French trial is unknown at this point, according to Common Pleas Court Administrator Gary Yates, it could be similar to the price tag of previous death penalty cases. Yates said the county would have to pay for two weeks of hotel rooms for the 12 jurors and four alternates, among other costs.
In 2010, the county spent $66,300 to prosecute Calvin McKelton in a death penalty case, Yates said. McKelton was convicted of the murders of Fairfield attorney Margaret Allen and Germaine Lamar Evans, a witness to Allen’s murder. Included in those costs were nearly $20,000 for both defense attorneys and $2,000 for rooms at a local hotel where jurors were sequestered.
Capital cases are expensive to prosecute, no matter their outcome. But cases of those who are placed on death row become even more expensive due to years on appeals, said French’s attorney, Melynda Cook, who has defended in 10 death penalty cases. Cook will be the lead counsel in the Warren County capital case of Terry Froman, accused I-75 shooter, in early 2016.
Cook acknowledged the process does frustrate her when after days of trial, a jury reaches a verdict that mirrors what the defense offered as a plea. She said she repeatedly offered to plead French out prior to his trial, including just a few days before when her client pleaded guilty to lesser included charges in the case.
“I offered in August when we were going over the evidence at the police station and at the house,” Cook said. “He (Gmoser) said no.”
Gmoser has taken the death penalty “off the table” and accepted life without the possibility of parole before, including the case involving Alfred Rutherford who shot and killed his daughter and her friend. But the prosecutor said that case and French’s were totally different.
“He (Rutherford) was a whack job, and he was spontaneous. Daniel French planned this crime and brutally killed an 87-year-old woman,” Gmoser said.
He noted it was also important for him to know what the sensibilities of a Butler County jury are when making a death penalty decision in such a “horrific case.”
Cook said while the cost would have been less to taxpayers had there not been a trial, there is another cost that can not be measured with money.
“It is the emotional cost of the continued victimization of the family at trial,” she said. “The horrible pictures that are shown. That is the last thing they see of their loved one. That never goes away.”
As difficult as the trial was for Howe’s elderly sister, Patricia Marshall, and her daughters and grandchildren, for Donna Wesselman, Howe’s youngest daughter, it was worth it.
“I support Mike Gmoser in his thinking on this case,” Wesselman said prior to the trial. “I also think while a trial is going to be brutal on my family, it is going to be infinitely more brutal for Daniel French. And if anybody needs to relive the horror of what he did, it is Daniel French. I am not going to make it easy on him to go quietly into prison.”
Wesselman said Thursday that she needed the trial and wanted her mother’s story to be told, but she is puzzled by the jury’s sentencing decision.
“I just don’t think the jury looked at all the evidence and discussed it,” Wesselman said. “It was very quick. But it doesn’t matter. He (French) is going to waste away in prison.”
But Wesselman is also conflicted, stating in some ways French, a former Mount Pleasant Retirement Community employee, has been given a “retirement home.” During an interview with police, French told detectives that he wanted to go to jail so he would be taken care of.
“I think he scammed everybody, and he continues to scam his own family,” Wesselman said of French’s remorseful demeanor. “He planned this. It wasn’t spur of the moment or because he was having a bad hair day; he planned it out.”
French hatched a plan to rob Howe at her Mount Pleasant Retirement Community cottage using the ruse of repairing her medical alarm system. Once he gained entry to her home, French shocked her with a stun gun, but when she didn’t go down, he choked her, then slit her throat with a double-edged knife.
He then put Howe’s body in the trunk of her red Cadillac and drove it to a Middletown apartment complex. To cover up DNA and the crime, French poured cleaning supplies and vacuum cleaner debris on Howe’s body before walking to Walmart and calling a cab.
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