Prosecutors ask judge to deny motion to move trial

The Geauga County Prosecutor’s Office wants the judge overseeing the Geauga’s Child murder case to deny a motion to move the trial out of the county.

Assistant Prosecutor Ashley M. Garrett argued there is no evidence of “presumptive pretrial prejudice” against defendant Gail Eastwood-Ritchey.

Eastwood-Ritchey, 49, of Euclid is facing aggravated murder and murder charges for the March 1993 death of a newborn baby found by a newspaper

carrier along Sidley Road in Thompson Township.

Defense attorney Steven L. Bradley cited widespread publicity of the case in his late-October motion asking Geauga County Common Pleas Court Judge David M. Ondrey to move the trial out of the county.

The trial is scheduled for Jan. 27.

Geauga County law enforcement officials announced EastwoodRitchey’s indictment in a June press conference. They said advances in DNA crime solving led to Eastwood-Ritchey, who allegedly confessed to similar homicide in Euclid two years prior to the Geauga’s Child murder.

Bradley is planning on challenging the admissibility of that information as evidence.

Bradley requested a hearing on his motion where he anticipates providing evidence of the widespread publicity.

Garrett wrote in her response

to Bradley’s motion that, “(e)ven assuming that the media coverage was sufficient to arouse the passions of this county to the extent that they could not be fair and impartial, it does not necessarily hold that they would hold those same views at the time of trial.”

She said that although the media has informed the public of certain facts of the case, there is no evidence to show that the information “has been so detrimental to the defendant that it can be presumed that no one in the county could be fair and impartial.”

Garrett argued that the trial judge is in the best position to judge each juror’s demeanor and fairness.

“Thus the trial court should impanel a jury prior to making a determination as to whether actual bias exists,” she said. Community members named the unknown baby “Geauga’s Child,” and money was raised to give the newborn a funeral and a headstone at Thompson Township’s Maple Grove Cemetery.