Death penalty still possible in rape, killing of OSU student
A Franklin County judge on Wednesday denied a request by defense attorneys to dismiss the death penalty as a sentencing option in the case of a man accused of kidnapping, raping and murdering an Ohio State University student.
Common Pleas Judge Mark Serrott rejected the defense’s argument that county prosecutors discriminate against black defendants when seeking death-penalty indictments from the grand jury.
Their client, Brian L. Golsby, is black. The murder victim, 21-year-old OSU student Reagan Tokes, was white.
“I just don’t see (the Franklin County prosecutor’s) office engaging in discriminatory practices,” Serrott said during a hearing at which the motion was debated by the two sides. “Is there a general issue in Ohio? Yes, maybe.”
Defense attorneys Kort Gatterdam and Diane Menashe submitted a lengthy motion in October in which they cited two studies that determined that blacks convicted of murder in Ohio are more likely to be executed if their victims are white. The attorneys also wrote that since 2005 in Franklin County, 16 of 25 defendants for whom the prosecutor’s office sought death-penalty indictments were black.
Prosecutor Ron O’Brien said the Ohio Supreme Court has found that “mere statistics” or “nose counting” isn’t enough to establish discriminatory application of the death penalty.
Golsby is “one case, one defendant and one set of facts. ... Any prosecutor who has the death penalty available to them” would seek it in Golsby’s case, O’Brien said.
Golsby, 29, is accused of kidnapping Tokes at gunpoint as she walked to her car after her shift at a Short North restaurant on Feb. 8. Her body was found the following afternoon near the entrance of Scioto Grove Metro Park in Grove City. She had been raped and shot twice in the head.
Golsby is a registered sex offender who recently had been released from prison and was living in an East Side halfway house. He was wearing an ankle monitor with a GPS tracking device at the time of the crime. The GPS data provided investigators crucial evidence in linking Golsby to the kidnapping and murder scenes.
Serrott also denied defense motions to suppress the GPS evidence and to delay the trial while awaiting action in the Ohio legislature on a bill seeking to eliminate the death penalty.