A special local judge has denied the motion to reopen the case of a convicted killer sentenced to die for the 1983 murder of a St. Elmo woman.
It was the latest blow to Edward Jerome Harbison, who by 1996 had exhausted all state appeals in an effort to save his life. But a 2007 discovery showing police did not obtain a proper arrest warrant before detaining him in 1983 led Mr. Harbison to appeal again.
At a February hearing in Hamilton County Criminal Court, state public defender Mary Ann Green argued the error would have “impeached the credibility of the officers” at the trial, possibly convincing jurors at the very least not to sentence Mr. Harbison to death.
Special Judge Jon Kerry Blackwood disagreed in his written opinion issued this week, siding with prosecutors’ arguments that the absence of the arrest warrant had not tainted the case or the trial.
Judge Blackwood noted that the affidavit of complaint, a sworn document that generally describes a crime and lists suspects, “has always supported the absence of any arrest warrant.”