Death penalty upheld for man in Fairfield murder, killing of witness

The death penalty for a Cincinnati man convicted of killing a Fairfield attorney and a witness to her fatal strangulation has been upheld by the Ohio Supreme Court.

In 2010, Calvin McKelton, now 39, was convicted of the 2008 murder of Margaret "Missy" Allen, his girlfriend and criminal defense attorney who previously represented him, and of the 2009 murder of Germaine "Mick" Evans. McKelton received the death penalty after being convicted of the specification that he murdered Evans to prevent his testimony at trial.

Justice Judith Ann Lanzinger wrote the majority opinion finding evidence showed that McKelton was properly convicted of murdering a friend who helped him cover up a murder and that the aggravating circumstances supporting the death penalty outweighed the mitigating circumstances beyond a reasonable doubt.

In a dissenting opinion, Justice William M. O’Neill wrote that McKelton’s death sentence should be dismissed and that he should receive a new mitigation hearing because his attorneys did not hire a mitigation expert to present McKelton’s case for sentencing him to life in prison.

According to facts of the case, Allen’s body was found July 27, 2008, in a wooded area of Schmidt Field Park in Cincinnati. The Hamilton County Coroner’s Office ruled the 37-year-old died of asphyxiation by strangulation.

A piece of plastic resembling a shower-curtain liner was around Allen’s thighs and a bag of counterfeit drugs lay near her body. A coroner’s report found that she died from strangulation, and when police searched her home, they found a long piece of weed-cutter cord on the floor. The shower curtain was on a hallway floor with no sign of a liner.

Allen was last seen July 24, 2008, by her childhood friend and law partner Rodney Harris, three days before her body was found in a decomposed state. Then Hamilton County coroner’s Coroner Dr. O’Dell Owens said he relied on dental records, tattoos and surgical scars to determine the body’s identity.

McKelton was living with Allen and her two nieces at the time of her death, and the girls testified the couple had physically violent arguments. Allen also kept a handwritten notebook and a computer document that chronicled her physical abuse.

Fairfield police interviewed McKelton, who refused to answer most of their questions, and they took fingerprints, DNA samples and fingernail scrapings. The DNA samples were not consistent with the DNA collected from Allen’s fingernails.

Months later, police learned that Evans was a possible eyewitness. A friend of Evans testified that Evans told him he was at Allen's house when he heard Allen and McKelton fighting in another room and then saw McKelton choking Allen. When she became unresponsive, the men tried to stage a robbery scene and set fire to the house. The two then wrapped up Allen's body and drove to a wooded area to dispose of it.

Evans’ body was later found in a city park, and a coroner’s report determined that he was killed with a single gunshot wound to the back of the head, possibly two or three days earlier.

Along with friends of Evans, three informants charged with other offenses testified that McKelton admitted to the murders.

The defense did not present any witnesses during the first phase of the trial, and the jury convicted McKelton of all but the charge of intimidation of a witness.

After the mitigation stage and the jury recommendation, the trial court sentenced McKelton to death for the aggravated murder of Evans, 15 years to life in prison for the murder of Allen, and 25 years for the remaining convictions.

McKelton appealed his conviction and sentence, claiming his state and U.S. constitution rights were violated because he was deprived of a fair trial. He maintained the violations included the state’s nondisclosure of eight witnesses until the evening before the trial, which left his defense attorneys unprepared for effective cross-examination. He also argued that his counsel provided ineffective assistance during the trial and mitigation stages.

The majority of the supreme court justices disagreed, and MeKelton’s conviction as well as sentence has been upheld.