CRESTLINE — Convicted triple murderer Kevin Keith’s application for a new trial was denied Friday by Crawford County Common Pleas Court Judge Sean E. Leuthold.
“This ruling allows the facts of what happened that horrible night and the subsequent trial to be the final finder of those facts,” Crawford County Prosecutor Matthew E. Crall said. “That is the way the judicial system works.”
Keith, of Crestline, was convicted in the 1994 aggravated murder of three people and the attempted murder of three more at Bucyrus Estates. He was sentenced to death. But just two weeks before his scheduled execution, Keith received a commutation (reduction) of his sentence by Gov. Ted Strickland in 2010. That commutation came in spite of a parole board’s 8-0 recommendation to carry out the sentence.
Three Bucyrus residents were killed in the shooting, including Marichell Chatman, 24; her daughter Marchae, 4; and Chatman’s aunt, Linda Chatman, 39. Marichell Chatman’s boyfriend, Rick Warren, and cousins Quanita Reeves, 7, and Quentin Reeves, 4, were wounded.
The 53-year-old Keith has consistently denied he was the shooter.
“The defendant professes his innocence,” Crall noted. “Fortunately, every court, the Crawford County Common Pleas, the Third District Court of Appeals, The Ohio Supreme Court, the Northern District Ohio Federal Court, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals and the United States Supreme Court — they have all, after carefully reviewing the facts, the procedure, and the evidence reached the same conclusion.
“The verdict was just and should remain.”
The state said Keith opened fire on a group in retaliation for a drug arrest he blamed on an informant related to the shooting victims.
The most recent request for a new trial surrounded the credibility of Bureau of Criminal Identification Forensic Scientist Michele Yezzo. Keith’s attorneys sought a new trial stating Yezzo’s testimony linked Keith to the crime scene.
Keith’s attorney’s noted that in Yezzo’s personnel file she was reprimanded in a separate case because her “interpretational and observational errors” were “failures that could lead to a substantial miscarriage of justice.”
Crall noted that Yezzo was not disciplined for any actions involving the Keith case and continued to work for BCI.
“The Court was correct to deny this motion,” Crall said. “Allowing this motion to go forward would have established a horrible precedent where prosecutors would have become responsible for knowing and disclosing any complaint filed against any witness — even when that complain is unfounded.
“Worse yet, the amount of frivolous complaints filed against police officers, forensic scientists, judges and prosecutors would increase exponentially.”
This was the fifth time Keith requested a new trial and the fifth time the motion was either denied or withdrawn.
“Perhaps the most disturbing facet of his case is that those who perished and those who survived being shot receive no mention in all the publicity,” Crall said. “I would ask everyone to remember the lives of those who died — Maricell D. Chatman, Linda J. Chatman, and Marchae D. Chatman; and those who were shot — Richard Warren, Quanita M. Reeves, and Quenton M. Reeves.”
