Judge sets $500K bond for ex-death row inmate Lamont Hunter whose conviction was vacated

A man whose death penalty conviction was thrown out this year could be released on bond while he awaits a new trial.

At a hearing Wednesday, Hamilton County Common Pleas Judge Christian Jenkins set bond for Lamont Hunter at $500,000. If Hunter can post 10% of that, he will be on lockdown at his residence 24 hours a day and monitored electronically. Jenkins also ordered Hunter to report weekly to authorities.

Prosecutors had asked Jenkins to deny bond. In a written decision released Wednesday, Jenkins said prosecutors did not provide enough evidence to support denying bond for Hunter, who remains charged with crimes including aggravated murder in the 2006 death of a 3-year-old boy.

In order to hold Hunter without bond, Jenkins said prosecutors had to show “the proof is evident or the presumption great” that Hunter committed the offenses.

“The state has failed to carry its burden,” Jenkins said.

At a 2007 trial before a three-judge panel, Hunter was found guilty of charges including aggravated murder and rape in the death of 3-year-old Trustin Blue. He was sentenced to death.

Hunter, now 54, spent more than 15 years on Ohio’s death row. But in March, prosecutors agreed to vacate his convictions after the deputy coroner who in 2006 ruled Trustin’s death a homicide changed her opinion based on evidence she hadn’t previously seen.

The deputy coroner, Dr. Gretel Stephens, testified at a 2021 deposition that was part of Hunter’s appeal process that Trustin’s manner of death was undetermined. Stephens also said injuries to Trustin she previously attributed to sexual assault were accidentally inflicted by hospital staff trying to insert a thermometer into his rectum.

Hunter said he was doing laundry in the basement of the house in Carthage he shared with Trustin’s mother and four children, when Trustin tumbled down the stairs and landed on the concrete floor.

Trustin was ultimately declared brain dead. Among his injuries were bleeding in his brain, retinal hemorrhages and acute brain swelling. He also had a dislocated disc in his neck.

Prosecutors say Hunter caused those injuries.

In May, a hearing began after prosecutors asked Jenkins to deny bond for Hunter. Among the evidence prosecutors submitted was a document signed by five of the seven pathologists at the Hamilton County Coroner’s Office, which said they agreed with Stephens’ original finding that Trustin’s death was a homicide. Stephens didn't sign the document. The second pathologist who didn’t sign was on medical leave.

Fatal injuries 'conceivably' caused by fall

For the 2021 deposition, Stephens was provided with records she hadn’t seen before she conducted the 2006 autopsy: records of Trustin’s treatment at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center and photographs of the basement stairs in Trustin’s home.

After reviewing the photographs, Stephens said the injuries that caused Trustin’s death could “conceivably” have resulted from a fall down the stairs, particularly if he had fallen off the side of the stairs that was unguarded by a wall.

“If we had all of the other information, we would probably have put that the manner of death was either accidental or could not be determined,” Stephens testified during the deposition.

At the bond hearing, which took place over two days in May, prosecutors said Stephens wanted to go back to her original finding that it was a homicide. Jenkins said prosecutors made that statement “without any supporting evidence.”

The document signed by the five pathologists, but not Stephens, provided “no explanation whatsoever for the conclusions set forth therein," Jenkins said.