USA - Ohio. New trial to Ahmad Fawzi Issa.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit has unanimously granted a new trial to Ahmad Fawzi Issa. The court ruled that the prosecution had presented untrustworthy hearsay testimony against Issa, denying him the opportunity to confront the person who allegedly had implicated him in the murder. Judge Gilbert S. Merritt filed a concurring opinion saying he also would have granted a new trial as a result of trial counsel's failure to present the victim's wife as a witness. The prosecution had also charged her with the murder, and she had testified in a prior trial—in which she was acquitted—that she and Issa had not conspired to kill her husband. Issa was sentenced to death on October 16, 1998 in the November 22, 1997 murders of Maher Khrais, 35, and Ziad Khrais, 49 (two jordanian brothers), who allegedly were murdered for hire by Andre Miles, at the instruction of Issa, whom, Miles said, had been paid by Linda Khriss to have her husband killed.