After more than three decades since his conviction for the slaying of a 10-year-old Ohio girl, death row inmate Jeffrey Wogenstahl is seeking a new trial. According to FOX19, Wogenstahl's legal team argues that Hamilton County jurors were not privy to essential eyewitness accounts when they found him guilty in 1993. These discrepancies in testimonies, his attorneys say, could undermine the identification of Wogenstahl as the perpetrator in the harrowing 1991 murder of Amber Garrett.
Hearings are set to take place throughout the week in Hamilton County as Wogenstahl and his attorneys exhaust efforts to challenge his death sentence and secure a new trial. This push follows a series of appeals, including a recent Ohio Supreme Court decision to deny their request to reopen his failed appeal on jurisdictional grounds. As reported by WLWT, the rejection by the state's highest court has not dissuaded the defense, who have filed a motion stating that jurors missed out on initial statements from all three eyewitnesses, which allegedly differed significantly from trial testimonies.
Meanwhile, Amber Garrett's family continues to grieve and seek closure more than 30 years after her death. "It’s aging me; it’s destroying me," her father, Robert Garrett, told WLWT regarding the ongoing legal proceedings. "It’s like Groundhog Day, over and over and over. When is it going to stop?" The conviction and extensive appeals seem to weigh heavily on both the family seeking solace and an inmate fighting against his sentence.
Despite the movement for a new trial, Assistant Hamilton County Prosecutor Phil Cummings maintains the evidence presented at the original trial was and is still incontrovertible, including a drop of Amber's blood found in Wogenstahl's car and foliage on his jacket consistent with foliage at the crime scene. Cummings expressed in court, in a statement obtained by FOX19, that if Wogenstahl were innocent, "he has to be the unluckiest SOB in history to be seen by multiple witnesses and all the relevant crime scenes in the exact time frame when this had to have occurred."
However, the defense's stance is that due process was not upheld in the original trial due to the suppression of specific evidence. They have brought to light an interview with Amber Garrett's friend that was never disclosed to Wogenstahl's original defense team. Detailed in WCPO, this interview with Amanda Beard reportedly revealed she saw Garrett the morning of her disappearance—a contradiction to the prosecution's timeline suggesting Garrett died hours earlier. Defense attorney Sarah Gelsomino argued, "This conviction violates due process. It is a miscarriage of justice," stressing the gravity and significance of the case at hand to Judge Jenkins. This week's hearings are anticipated to culminate with a determination from Judge Jenkins regarding Wogenstahl's potential for a new trial.
