An Ohio man who was sentenced to death for killing his cellmate while incarcerated for an earlier murder had his convictions tossed by a split panel of the Sixth Circuit on Thursday, after it found the lower court had denied him his right to represent himself.
August Cassano killed his cellmate, Walter Hardy, while serving a prison sentence for aggravated murder at Mansfield Correctional Institution in Ohio. Cassano was indicted in March 1998, and filed a filed a pro se waiver of counsel two months later. The court concluded it wouldn’t be in Cassano’s “best interest” to represent himself.
Cassano ...
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