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The suspected serial killers name is Anthony Sowell and his home in Cleveland, Ohio is being torn apart by forensic experts and other crime scene investigators. These crime experts from local and federal law enforcement agencies are looking to identify even more evidence that might incriminate 50 year old Anthony Sowell in further involvement in even more murders, brutal rapes, assault on corpses. Only one conviction on a murder charge for Sowell could have him facing the death penalty.

This Cleveland mass murder suspect was indicted on 85 criminal counts on Tuesday December 8. The total number of Sowell suspected murder victims stands at 11 and all of them are of African American descent and female.

While the police cadaver dogs from the canine unit help in discovering more clues from the current home and previous addresses of Sowell, the suspected serial killer is being held in custody in an isolated prison cell .

On Thursday, December 10, 2009, Anthony Sowell entered a plea of guilty by reason of insanity.

The indictment presented in this court numbered 14 alleged victims which were the 11 already identified plus 3 unresolved local murder cases which are being investigated for correlations to Anthony Sowell.

 

 

More on Sowell here.

 

 

Mr Sowell has pleaded guilty already and this case is being presented as a “death penalty case”.  The judge ordered psychiatric assessments for Anthony Sowell to undergo which leaves the balance of power in the mental ability of this serial killer in the hands of medical experts.

Should these psychiatrists accept that Anthony Sowell committed these violent murder/rape/assault/kidnap crimes without sane reasoning then what becomes of the Sowell trial ?

Ohio’s death penalty is being questioned by many people concerned with the ethics of prisoner execution. The European Union has even requested the state of Ohio to halt it ‘s current law on death row inmates. In October of 2009 cleveland.com was reporting that the death penalty as been put temporarily on hold mainly due to the inability of the state to find “medical professionals willing to advise it on the best way to put condemned inmates to death because of ethical and professional issues”.

 

 

The state of Ohio was recording a record number of death sentences  in 2009 but the injection system they were using was failed them on at least one execution and the Ohio justice system was facing many lawsuits from members of the criminals family.

One of the problem with finding expert doctors to help in finding more accurate terminal injection method that might prove more civilized is that most doctors are members of the American Medical Association or AMA and this professional affiliations disallows them from being active in capital punishment dealings. The AMA states that doctors are healers and not killers as a defence.

Meanwhile of the 8 death row inmates in Ohio scheduled for execution by injection in 2009 only four had the death sentence carried out. The fifth inmate scheduled to be executed was Romell Broom but the executioner met with problems and the procedure was temporarily halted. Broom who’d been convicted, tried, and found guilty the rape and killing of a juvenile girl in 1984  was turned to his lawyers and sought an appeal trial on his death penalty. This trial prompted the Ohio courts cancel and reschedule the other capital punishment cases.

Along comes December of 2009 and again the Ohio lawmakers are calling for another person to be tried on the Ohio laws that govern capital punishment. This time around it is Anthony Sowell, the 50 year old Ohio African American who is charged and indicted in 14 cases of rape, kidnapping, and murder of fellow African American women. Only one conviction of murder will have him facing the executioner.

But Sowell is pleading guilty by reason of insanity at the pretrial hearing which was heard in Ohio court on December 10, 2009.

 

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