State won't appeal order in restaurant slaying case

7/28/2005

COLUMBUS - The state will not ask the U.S. Supreme Court to hear an appeal of last month's federal ruling ordering Ohio to retry or release death row inmate Jamie R. Madrigal, convicted of killing an 18-year-old assistant restaurant manager during a 1996 robbery.

The Lucas County prosecutor's office has already said it would retry Madrigal absent a Supreme Court appeal.

Madrigal was convicted of shooting Misty Fisher, an Oregon high school senior, in the back of the head when she failed to open a locked safe quickly enough at the KFC restaurant at South Avenue and Anthony Wayne Trail in South Toledo on April 12, 1996.

The U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower federal court ruling that jurors should not have heard a purported accomplice's police confession implicating Madrigal when that witness made himself unavailable for cross-examination at trial by invoking the Fifth Amendment.

"While we remain convinced that the court incorrectly decided this case, we do not believe that further appeals would be accepted," said Kim Norris, spokesman for Attorney General Jim Petro.

"Instead, we will direct our energies to assisting Lucas County in reconvicting Mr. Madrigal at a new trial."