BY SAUNDRA AMRHEIN
The Cincinnati Enquirer
LEBANON -- Jury selection begins today in the murder trial of James Hanna, accused of plunging a wooden paintbrush handle into the eye socket of a cellmate and killing him a year ago.
If convicted, Mr. Hanna, 49, could be the first Warren County defendant to receive the death penalty since 1907. The last death-penalty case tried in Warren County was 1995 against Willie Ledford. But the Franklin man instead received a life sentence for the killing of Ellen I. New, 55, a clerk at a Franklin Dairy Mart.
The county has sought the death penalty in five cases tried since 1985 but lost.
Mr. Hanna's trial before Warren County Common Pleas Court Judge Neal Bronson is expected to last two weeks after jury selection, which could take most of this week.
A pool of about 150 people must be whittled down to 16, with 12 jurors and four alternates.
The pool is almost twice as big as in regular trials to weed out those opposed to the death penalty, said Warren County Assistant Prosecutor Ken Ewing.
Mr. Hanna was indicted in January, charged with aggravated murder, in the death of Peter Copas, 43.
Mr. Copas was Mr. Hanna's cellmate at the Lebanon Correctional Institution at the time of the assault in August 1997. Mr. Hanna was serving two life sentences for a 1977 murder during an armed robbery in Lucas County.
The two had been sharing a cell for four days when Mr. Hanna allegedly pounced on Mr. Copas in his sleep one day between 4 and 6 a.m. He is accused of plunging the paintbrush handle 5 inches into Mr. Copas' eye socket and then beating him in the head with a lock in a sock.
Mr. Copas died several weeks later on Sept. 10. He had been serving eight to 20 years from Franklin County convictions for corruption of a minor and intimidation.
