Latest Short North parking plan has critics
Columbus plans to launch a pilot program to solve parking problems in the Short North in January, but some residents say the latest iteration of the plan won’t work.
The biggest point of contention: Residents want to ban outsiders from parking on residential streets after 4 p.m. City officials contend that is far too restrictive.
Columbus plans to have two more open houses and a public hearing before asking the City Council to vote in July on a framework that gives the director of the city’s Department of Public
when Rutledge’s mental health is expected to be at the forefront of an effort by his defense attorneys to persuade the same jury that he shouldn’t be sentenced to death.
Under Ohio law, mental health is among what are known as mitigating factors that jurors can weigh in determining an appropriate sentence. If they decide that death is not appropriate, they must recommend a sentence of either life in prison without parole, or life with a chance of parole after 25 or 30 years.
Their sentencing recommendation must be unanimous.
During the trial, jurors heard testimony from
Rutledge’s ex-wife about how his mental health was unraveling in the months leading up to an April 10, 2016, standoff with a SWAT team during which Officer Steven Smith was fatally shot. Officers had tried to arrest Rutledge on a warrant accusing him of setting her house on fire. Instead, Rutledge barricaded himself inside his Clintonville apartment and began shooting.
Common Pleas Judge Mark Serrott, at the urging of prosecutors, instructed jurors that they couldn’t use evidence of mental-health problems in determining whether Rutledge was trying to kill officers or knew that he
was shooting at officers.
Defendants in Ohio can’t use mental illness as a defense unless they are arguing that they are not guilty by reason of insanity, said Common Pleas Judge Stephen L. McIntosh, who presided over a death-penalty trial in 2008. But when it’s time for sentencing, mental health and “just about anything else about the defendant can be considered as mitigation,” McIntosh said.
State law lists the mitigating factors to be considered, including “whether, at the time of committing the offense, the offender, because of a mental disease or defect, lacked substantial capacity to appreciate the criminality of the offender’s conduct or to conform the offender’s conduct to the
requirements of the law.”
The law gives defendants “great latitude” in presenting mitigating factors, which can include the person’s age, character, criminal record “and any other factors that are relevant to the issue of whether the offender should be sentenced to death.”
The jury in Rutledge’s sentencing phase is likely to hear testimony about his mental health from a psychologist and those who know him best.
Jim Crates, a death-penalty mitigation specialist based in Granville, said personality disorders are more commonly cited during mitigation than are diagnoses such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder.
“A significant majority” of death-penalty defendants “are very damaged human beings,” Crates said. “We try to get a handle on why they are as damaged as they are. It can be family trauma, emotional abuse, sexual abuse.”
Mitigating factors shouldn’t be viewed as mere excuses for criminal behavior, said Ronald Janes, a Columbus defense lawyer who estimated he has handled about 10 deathpenalty cases. Anyone who is dismissive of mitigating factors should be excluded during the jury-selection process in a death-penalty case, Janes said.
“The legislature decided that this is important, that these are factors that the jury should consider,” Janes said. “It’s up to the jurors to decide how much weight to give them.”