For two prisoners who feel they have been wrongly convicted, 16 years in jail is time they can never get back.
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court of Ohio heard oral arguments regarding the cases of Robert Gondor and Randy Resh, two men convicted of taking part in the 1988 kidnapping, attempted rape and murder of Connie Nardi in Portage County, Ohio. Backing the defense team of the two men from Mantua, family and friends piled into the court room and displayed orange “Free Rob and Randy” ribbons on their shirts, nodding and shaking their heads as defense and plaintiff attorneys argued their cases.
But as the justices heated up the bench with questions, they made clear that granting retrials to Gondor and Resh will hinge on two major issues: whether the original defense team failed to present evidence in 1990 that would have changed the outcome of the men’s trials and whether or not the men were effectively represented by their public defenders.
During the summer of 1990, juries in separate trials found Gondor guilty of manslaughter while convicting Resh of aggravated murder. The convictions were largely based on the testimony of a third man, Troy Busta, whom was found guilty as an accomplice in Nardi’s murder, but received a lighter sentence by submitting his full testimony in a plea agreement.
According to the testimony of Busta during the criminal trial, he and 31-year-old Nardi left the Upper Deck, a Portage County bar, and Busta devised a plan to have sex with Nardi by the Cuyahoga River. When the couple returned to the bar some time later, Busta said Gondor and Resh were there drinking. Busta said he told Resh he could “get some” with Nardi if he followed him back to the river. Busta and Nardi left the Upper Deck once again; 15 minutes later, Gondor and Resh showed up in Gondor’s white pick-up truck, according to Busta’s testimony.
Busta said that when Nardi refused Gondor’s sexual advances and kicked him, Resh punched Nardi several times and then choked her to death. The three men, said Busta, then loaded her body into Gondor’s truck and dumped it in a Geauga County pond. A fisherman discovered the body several days later.
But Gondor and Resh’s testimonies did not match up to Busta’s account of the evening.
Each man testified that they saw Nardi and Busta, who they claimed to know only as an acquaintance, leave the bar around 8:30 p.m. Around 10 p.m., the two men instead said they left the bar and headed to the Village Tavern in Gondor’s truck – by Busta’s account, the time when the men would have been present at the murder scene. Returning to the Upper Deck about an hour later, Gondor and Resh said they stayed until midnight, visited a local pizza parlor, and then retired for the evening.
Following their convictions, Gondor and Resh began their 16-year journey to reach the Supreme Court of Ohio.
After the men submitted their cases for appeal in 1992, the 11th District Court of Appeals affirmed their previous convictions. Several attempts later, their appeals were finally considered in 1996 and the 11th District called for a new trial. But soon after, attorneys from the state of Ohio cried foul and the 11th District reversed the new trial court’s findings – at which time both men appealed to the Supreme Court of Ohio.
“To know that the Ohio Supreme Court only accepts less than 2 percent of the cases that are presented before them – this was huge for us to get in,” said Patty Vechery-Akey, a family friend of the two imprisoned men. “They just kept getting injustice over and over and over again,” she said.
Vechery-Akey said she got involved three years ago when she started campaigning for the mens’ bid for a new trial, even creating a Web site – www.freebobandrandy.com – to bring public attention to Gondor and Resh’s cases.
“(Gondor and Resh) have never asked for any preferential treatment. They’ve never asked for anything than what the Constitution prescribes,” Vechery-Akey said. “This (hearing) is long overdue.”
Gondor and Resh’s defense argued that the handling of their cases violated the Sixth and 15th Amendments. The Sixth Amendment guarantees “the accused shall enjoy the right to a fair and speedy trial” while the 16th Amendment says the state may not “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”
Because original attorneys failed to review the guilt-clearing evidence available to them, the defense said, the jury’s decisions were not reliable and botched Gondor and Resh’s trials.
“The message I was trying to get was that when you look at the facts that never made it to the jury … no reasonable person could have confidence in the (trial’s) outcome,” said attorney James Owen, who has represented Gondor and Resh since their appeal in 1996.
“I believe passionately that they’re innocent,” Owen said. “That’s what caused me to get involved with the litigation.”
To justify new trials for Gondor and Resh, Owen cited faults in Busta’s testimony, questionable blood stains found on Gondor’s truck bed liner, and accounts of employees working at the pizza shop Gondor and Resh claimed to visit.
During argument before the Court, Owen said Busta was a man who “sold his soul to the devil” during his original testimony to avoid the death penalty.
Busta initially denied any knowledge of who the killers were during his testimony. But when investigators asked Busta if he would testify against Gondor and Resh in exchange for a reduced sentence, Busta said he would “do anything” to avoid the electric chair, a death penalty still legal in Ohio at the time.
In addition, Owen said later analysis of the bed-liner residue showed that it was not blood, but most likely sweat because of its protein makeup and the absence of DNA – a conclusion which was not presented at the trial.
Finally, Owen said the testimonies of the pizza shop employees were not fully investigated. The employees said Gondor and Resh came in days after Nardi’s murder to verify their whereabouts before any police investigation. The defense, however, said the employees’ descriptions and work records showed the men came in after being interrogated.
State attorney Pamela Holder said the 11th District’s decision to reinstate Gondor and Resh’s convictions should be upheld because their cases were reviewed under the proper standards.
The seven justices questioned Holder intensely, focusing mostly on post-conviction evidence the defense presented. In one instance, while presenting her case before the court, Justice Paul Pfeifer accused Holder’s argument of being “logically inconsistent.”
“At one point I had to agree or disagree with Justice Pfeifer,” Holder said. “But you have to answer the questions and try and focus the answers on the whole panel.”
Though Owen and Holder would not speculate on the outcome of the justices’ future decision, Michelle Resh, Randy’s sister, said she felt the hearing went very well for the men’s defense.
“I believe after this, they will (get a retrial),” Michelle said. “We’re thinking positive.”
