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Prosecution
seeks death penalty
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| Michael Rittenhouse
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The grand jury hearing for Yellow Springs resident Michael
Rittenhouse, originally scheduled for Tuesday, has been postponed until
an unspecified time within the next two months.
Rittenhouse, 20, is accused of killing his Yellow
Springs High School classmate Tim Lopez, who had been missing for more than
two years.
He turned himself in to the Yellow Springs police
on Thursday after the Greene County sheriff’s department issued a
warrant for his arrest.
At an arraignment via closed-circuit television
in Xenia Municipal Court on Friday, Greene County prosecutors charged Rittenhouse
on four counts: aggravated murder, aggravated robbery, gross abuse of a
corpse and tampering with evidence. Xenia Municipal Judge Susan Goldie ordered
that Rittenhouse be held without bond.
Rittenhouse pleaded innocent, his attorney, John
Rion of Dayton, said.
On early Friday morning searchers found human remains,
which were later identified as those of Lopez, buried in the backyard of
the home Rittenhouse shared with his mother and brother at 430 Allen Street.
According to the Greene County coroner’s office,
Lopez, 18, died from blunt trauma to the head. Prosecutors have not yet
identified a murder weapon, Suzanne Schmidt, the first assistant prosecutor,
said on Monday.
The prosecutor’s office is seeking the death
penalty in the case because Lopez was allegedly “killed as a result
of an aggravated robbery, which is a death-qualifying case,” Schmidt
said.
Rion said that he is concerned about the prosecutors’
decision to seek the death penalty. “We see so many other cases where
the death penalty is not inserted,” he said. “I’m interested
in that not being a factor in this case.”
Rion also said that the charge of “aggravated
murder doesn’t fit the facts.”
The prosecutor’s office now has up to 60 days
to schedule the grand jury hearing, said Schmidt, who noted that Tuesday’s
hearing was postponed because of a motion from Rion. Rion also waived the
preliminary hearing for the case.
Rion said that he waived the preliminary hearing
and postponed the grand jury to give both sides more time to prepare for
a complicated case. He said the actions have “enabled them to postpone
their rush into this matter.”
The grand jury hears only the prosecutor’s
side of a case, said Rion, and determines whether or not the charges are
justified. According to Rion, the grand jury “typically rubber stamps
the prosecutor.”
Lopez disappeared after he left Yellow Springs High
School on the morning of Jan. 22, 2002. His car was found later that day
near Grinnell Mill in the South Glen.
Law enforcement officials, including Miami Township
Fire-Rescue and John Bryan State Park rangers, searched the Glen, Clifton
Gorge and Bryan Park for several days.
Last Wednesday, around 4:30 p.m., the Greene County
sheriff’s department and the Greene County ACE Task Force, with assistance
from Yellow Springs police, began searching the backyard of the Rittenhouse
home for the remains of Lopez. Authorities removed 16 pieces of evidence
from the Rittenhouse home. Test results on the items have not yet been returned
from the Miami Valley Crime Lab.
Authorities searched Rittenhouse’s home after
receiving a tip from an informant. Greene County Sheriff Gene Fischer said
at a press conference on Thursday that the informant had come forward about
two weeks earlier and the department had spent the intervening time gathering
new information.
Fischer said that inside the home sheriff detectives
found “evidence consistent to what the lead said,” which led
to the warrant for Rittenhouse.
Law enforcement officials did not find a body Wednesday
and called off the search after midnight.
When the sheriff’s department and police arrived
on Wednesday, Rittenhouse was not at home and he remained at large for about
24 hours.
According to Yellow Springs Police Chief Carl Bush,
Village police received a call from Rittenhouse at about 3 p.m. on Thursday,
asking for Captain John Grote or Sergeant Tom Jones and stating that he
wanted to turn himself in.
At that time, Rittenhouse said, he was about three
hours north of town and would drive immediately to the police department.
Police later received a call from Rittenhouse at a Huber Heights gas station,
where he had run out of gas. Bush and Jones met him at the station at around
6 p.m. and arrested him without incident, the chief said.
Rittenhouse was “real calm, real solemn, real
cooperative” when he was arrested, Bush said, and Jones transported
him to the Greene County Jail.
After 10 p.m. on Thursday, law enforcement officials
returned to Rittenhouse’s Allen Street home and eventually began digging
in the backyard. Shortly after 1 a.m., Fischer confirmed that they had found
human remains on the property. The next day, the coroner’s office
used dental records to confirm that the remains were Lopez’s.
Neither the sheriff’s department, the prosecutors
nor Rion would discuss a possible motive for the alleged crime.
“I’m precluded from talking about that.
I can’t speculate,” Schmidt said, adding that the alleged murder
was “the result of an aggravated burglary.”
Schmidt would not comment on whether other people
might be implicated in the case in the future. “The detectives are
following up on all leads,” Schmidt said.
Rion said that as of Monday he had spent about 10
hours with Rittenhouse and his family.
“It’s captured our imagination,”
Rion said of the case, adding that he has spent considerable time with the
Rittenhouses gaining background information on Michael and that “all
the things we are doing are coming up positive. He has no previous record,
good social involvement and has done no previous harm” to others.
Overall, said Rion, “I’m still trying
to get a working set of facts.”
Rion also said that Rittenhouse’s parents,
Gilah Pomeranz and Bill Rittenhouse, “are devastated and thunderstruck.
Their whole life and everything they thought to be true has now changed.”
—Diane Chiddister |
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