Conviction overturned in hit man hiring case
A former model from Pickaway County who went to prison last year for hiring a hitman to kill the mother of her two stepdaughters has had her conviction thrown out on appeal because the indictment against her was “fatally flawed.”
A judge in the Fourth District Court of Appeals ruled that because of a prosecutor’s error in the indictment language, the case against Tara Lambert, 34, never should have been allowed to proceed.
Criminal defense attorney Sam Shamansky, who represented Lambert in her
appeal, said he expects her to be released today from the Ohio Reformatory for Women in Marysville.
Pickaway County Prosecutor Judy Wolford did not return a call for comment about whether her office will appeal this ruling, attempt to re-indict Lambert on the same felony charge or offer her a plea deal to some lesser offense.
A Pickaway County jury convicted Lambert in February 2016 on a first-degree felony charge of conspiracy to commit aggravated murder. Prosecutors said that Lambert gave a man — who turned out to be an undercover detective — $125 as down payment to kill Kellie Cooke, who had once been in a relationship with Lambert’s husband and has two daughters with him. Jurors acquitted Lambert on a charge that she also wanted Cooke’s current husband, Shawn Cooke, dead.
The Cookes had custody of the teenage girls, but the two couples had long been engaged in an escalating and bitter dispute about visitation schedules and rules. (Lambert and her husband, Brandon, have since divorced.)
The murder-for-hire deal took place in a Kentucky Fried Chicken parking lot in Circleville and was caught on hidden cameras in the detective’s car. In addition to the down payment, Lambert provided the detective with a photo of Mrs. Cooke, her address and a typed description of her vehicles and her schedule.
Pickaway County Common Pleas Judge P. Randall Knece sentenced Lambert to seven years in prison.
On Wednesday, however, the Fourth District Court of Appeals said that because of an error in the indictment, the case never should have proceeded.
Under the law, for a charge of conspiracy to commit aggravated murder, prosecutors must say specifically what “overt act” Lambert did to make this happen.
“Did she buy a gun, for example? The prosecutor had to spell out what that underlying overt act was that contributed here,” Shamansky said. “The state did not do that.”
Appellate Court Judge Peter B. Abele wrote that Lambert also had ineffective counsel in her then-attorney James Kingsley because he should have recognized the error and
asked to have the case dismissed. Kingsley, a former prosecutor, did not return a call seeking comment.
Mrs. Cooke said a victim’s advocate and a detective called her Wednesday afternoon to tell her about the developments and to say that Lambert would be released soon. She said she is trying not to go back to being immediately afraid. She’s upset, though, that any mistake was made.
“She’s not innocent. She’s getting off on a technicality,” Mrs. Cooke said of Lambert. “We’re not going to let this go. We’re going to fight until she’s back where she needs to be: in prison.”
On the tape recorded in the detective’s car, Lambert can be seen giggling and laughing and at one point even claps her hands in apparent delight about what could be done to Mrs. Cooke.
She eventually tells the “hit man,” in reference to Cooke: “I need her away. Gone. Just put her in a chopper, you know like one of those lumberjack chopper things.”
Mr. Cooke said he is angry at both prosecutor Wolford and Assistant Prosecutor Jayme Hartley Fountain, who handled much of the case.
“We’re the victims here. But now we’re just innocent bystanders and have no say in what happens next,” he said. “The prosecutor’s error has cost our family a lot and they should fight for our family now.”