A man who has been on Ohio's death row for 31 years for killing a girl he abducted from her bedroom cannot reopen his appeal, the Ohio Supreme Court said Tuesday.
While on death row, Jeffrey Wogenstahl, 63, has continued to challenge his 1993 conviction in Hamilton County Common Pleas Court on charges including aggravated murder and kidnapping. In 2015, the Supreme Court agreed to look at issues in the case, including whether Hamilton County was the proper jurisdiction.
Although 10-year-old Amber Garrett lived in Harrison and according to prosecutors was taken from her bedroom, her body was found four miles away, in a wooded ravine across the border, in southeastern Indiana. It has never been determined where she was killed. Wogenstahl's attorneys argued in the appeal that prosecutors never established that Amber was killed in Ohio, and therefore he couldn't be tried for murder in Ohio.
The Supreme Court ultimately ruled that under state law at the time of the killing, a crime committed in an unknown location could be "conclusively presumed" to take place in Ohio. A now-former justice, Judith French, who authored a concurring opinion in the 2017 decision , noted that the law may be unconstitutional.
Wogenstahl's attorneys cited French's concurring opinion in trying to get the Ohio Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court to consider constitutional arguments, but both refused.
Last year, his attorneys went to the state 1st District Court of Appeals, which denied a request to reopen Wogenstahl's appeal. That denial was appealed to the state Supreme Court, leading to Tuesday's decision.
In the 6-1 decision, the court declined to address the claim that the law subjecting Wogenstahl to trial in Ohio was unconstitutional. The opinion, authored by Chief Justice Sharon Kennedy, said the issue should have been raised decades ago.
Because the appeals court upheld Wogenstahl's conviction in 1994, the opinion says, it could be reopened after only if there was "good cause," or a substantial reason for doing so.
"Wogenstahl had ample opportunity to challenge the constitutionality of (the state law) before now but failed to do so in a timely manner," the opinion says.
Three justices, including Joe Deters, who was Hamilton County's prosecutor in 1993 and the led the prosecution of Wogenstahl, recused themselves. Justices Pat DeWine, who handled the case as an appellate judge, and Pat Fischer also did not participate. Three judges from three different state appellate courts were assigned to the case.
'I didn't do it!'
Wogenstahl has maintained his innocence for three decades. After being found guilty in 1993, according to an Enquirer story, he cried uncontrollably in the courtroom and said: "I didn't do it! I'm sorry! I didn't do it!"
Among the evidence against him was a drop of blood in his car that matched Amber's DNA. Also, a strand of his hair was found embedded in the girl's underwear. Witnesses also saw Wogenstahl near where her body was found.
Amber’s mother, Peggy Garrett, had known him for several weeks. According to testimony, Wogenstahl and Garrett were together at two bars the night Amber disappeared. Wogenstahl testified that he went to Garrett's apartment around 3 a.m. that night to buy marijuana from Garrett's son. He said he then drove the son to where Garrett was and then went home.
But prosecutors said Wogenstahl took Amber from her bedroom. Amber was stabbed 11 times and beat with a blunt object. Her body was found three days later, on Nov. 27, 1991.
Separate motions surrounding Wogenstahl's conviction are still pending in both state and federal court.
The death penalty in Ohio remains uncertain. Gov. Mike DeWine has suspended all executions as the state struggles to find suppliers that are willing to allow their drugs to be used to kill people.
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Ohio Supreme Court rejects death sentence appeal in 1991 killing of Harrison girl
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