Case No. 2012-1644 Nathaniel Jackson v. State of Ohio
Eleventh District Court of Appeals (Trumbull County)

Nathaniel Jackson is contesting his death sentence in his second direct appeal to the Ohio Supreme Court. He received a new sentencing hearing in 2010 because the prosecutors had helped draft the trial court's sentencing opinion for the judge in his case.

Jackson and Donna Roberts were romantically involved in 2001 while Roberts was living with her ex-husband, Robert Fingerhut. During that year, Jackson went to prison. While there, he and Roberts plotted to kill Fingerhut for $550,000 in insurance money. Fingerhut was shot to death in December 2001, and Roberts and Jackson were each convicted for aggravated murder and received death sentences.

The Ohio Supreme Court affirmed Jackson's convictions and death sentence in 2006. Later that year, though, a unanimous Supreme Court sent Roberts' death-penalty appeal back to the trial court for resentencing because Judge John M. Stuard had involved the prosecutor in writing Roberts' sentencing opinion, and did so without the defense counsel's knowledge. Judge Stuard presided over both trials, and was publicly reprimanded by the Court in 2009 for the actions in the Roberts case. The judge acknowledged he enlisted the prosecutor's help in drafting Jackson's sentencing opinion as well, and the Eleventh District Court of Appeals granted Jackson a new sentencing hearing in 2010.

The judge held the resentencing hearing on Aug. 14, 2012, and again imposed the death penalty. Jackson has raised 11 arguments in his brief to the Court challenging the death sentence imposed in that hearing.