Kevin Keith, 54, was found guilty of three shooting deaths at Bucyrus Estates in 1994. Keith filed a civil-rights suit Jan. 8 against Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine, the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation, the Crawford County Prosecutor's Office, Crawford County Prosecutor Matt Crall, former BCI members Daniel Cappy and John Lenhart, former Bucyrus police Chief Mike Corwin, the Bucyrus Police Department and G. Michele Yezzo, the state's expert in the May 1994 trial. That suit was filed in the U.S. District Court, Northern District of Ohio, Eastern Division, while the Ohio Supreme Court was still considering Keith's request for a new trial. The state's high court denied the request. Later, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case. Crall said it's not normal to see a lawsuit concerning civil rights from a person who is still in prison. "This case, the conviction was not overturned, so the law says that you don’t have a civil rights violation because you’re still validly convicted," Crall said. "I think they were thinking they were going to have the case overturned." Friday's decision was in favor of dismissing Keith's lawsuit, which was requested by all defendants listed in the suit. Keith alleged those defendants deliberately ignored a subpoena for police dispatch logs from February of 1994 and that the state's expert hastily testified without properly examining all evidence. The court wrote Friday that "success on his claims would not mean a mere retesting of evidence or an eventual opportunity for a new trial. It would mean that a court would first be required to making some finding that conduct from Keith's trial violated his constitutional rights. ... this court must dismiss this claim." When Keith was convicted, he was sentenced to death. In September 2010, then-Gov. Ted Strickland commuted Keith's death sentence to life without parole. Keith's case has been appealed a number of times, most recently last year. In June, an appellate court in Lima upheld his conviction. On Oct. 28, 2016, Crawford County Common Pleas Judge Sean Leuthold denied a motion for a new trial, which Keith's attorneys argued was warranted because newly discovered evidence had turned up concerning a BCI forensic analyst who testified against him. When filing the motion for a new trial, Keith's attorneys said Yezzo, the state's expert, "provided the critical forensic conclusions regarding Mr. Keith" to try to link Keith to the crime scene. "That expert was known to the state — though not to Mr. Keith —  as someone who will stretch the truth to satisfy a department. Since the trial, her forensic conclusions have proven faulty," they said. Crall said Yezzo's employers at the Ohio Attorney General's Office had already reviewed her conduct and reinstated her to work prior to her testimony in the Keith case. Although he was not the county's prosecutor at the time of that decision, Crall said he would not see a need to disclose Yezzo's prior investigation if the Keith case were to be held today. Yezzo's testimony helped connect an important part of the trial. Crall said that as he was fleeing the scene of the murders, Keith drove into a snowbank — police found where his vehicle's license plate left an imprint in the snow, from which police made a plaster casting. Yezzo did a forensic analysis of the license plate imprint, as well as the tire tracks that were discovered.
Keith is jailed at the Marion Correctional Institution. He has been in prison since June 1, 1994."

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