On this date, May 18, 2020, Joel Drain was sentenced to death for the murder of his inmate, Christopher Richardson in 2019. Drain was already serving a life sentence where Court records indicate that he strangled Randy Grose, 56, while stabbing him numerous times in the head and stomach. Another good reason why murderers will kill behind bars.
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Joel Drain faces the possibility of the death penalty after a brutal assault kills another prisoner
Man who confessed to killing inmate gets death penalty
By Keith BieryGolick Cincinnati Enquirer
Posted May 18, 2020 at 4:13 PM
LEBANON – Joel Drain walked out of his cell and downstairs in the Warren Correctional Institution. He covered the blood on his shirt by putting on a green hoodie. Drain, 38, greeted a friend and told him he had just smoked synthetic marijuana, even though he had not.
Drain later told investigators he said this because he looked crazy – and he had just killed someone. As he walked by other inmates in his unit, an officer noticed blood on the stairs. This officer followed the blood upstairs, where he found a bloody footprint.
He followed the blood to Drain’s cell, No. 215, and called for backup when he got there. Another officer arrived and unlocked the door, where a window had been covered to block the view of what was inside.
Once opened, officers saw a room in disarray. They saw an inmate with a bloody sheet covering his face. They saw part of a broken fan, cable wire from a TV and pencils on the bed. When the sheet was removed, they would discover one pencil had been jammed into the inmate’s eye.
As the officers called for more backup, Drain got on his knees downstairs and put his hands in the air.
When he woke up that morning, in April 2019, Drain said he planned to kill someone else. When he spoke with state investigators hours later, dragging past midnight, he forgot the man’s name whom he’d killed.
There was another inmate who lived in his unit. That inmate was a child molester, Drain said in a recorded interview played in Warren County Common Pleas Court Monday. And that’s who he woke up planning to kill, he said.
Drain had been using nail clippers to fashion a knife out of his cell window, but it was taking too long.
“I was getting antsy,” he told investigators.
He had invited Christopher Richardson into his cell to smoke synthetic marijuana. Richardson, 29, was serving four years for aggravated arson. The two knew each other, but not well. Drain had no problems with him and said he was “weirdly friendly.”
When Richardson got to the cell, Drain’s adrenaline was pumping. He had disassembled a fan and removed the heavy motor from it. He kept it in his hoodie.
“I started thinking he’d be an easy kill,” Drain told investigators about Richardson. “I could still carry out my plan. I could kill him and the other guy.”
So he did. By beating him with the fan, the stabbing him in the eye.
Drain would later confess to the killing in a letter he sent to The Columbus Dispatch.
As these details were revealed Monday, heavy rain could be heard coming down outside the Warren County Court of Common Pleas. The rain was loud, but not as loud as the tears of Richardson’s mother.
Drain was on trial Monday on charges of aggravated murder and two other felonies. A three-judge panel found Drain guilty of all charges and sentenced him to death. It took them about an hour to reach their decision.
Drain, of Findlay, had previously been convicted of murder in 2016 and was serving a possible life sentence. He’d been transferred to the Warren County prison a few weeks before the 2019 homicide because he had cut his wrist.
Drain’s attorneys presented little evidence in his defense. He waived his right to a jury trial and pleaded no contest. He told the court he didn’t want to blame his actions on a dysfunctional childhood or other trauma in his life.
He said his attorneys tried to get his 14-year-old daughter to testify, but he wouldn’t allow it.
“My daughter has nothing to do with my criminal behavior,” he said. “I refuse to let her be used as a human shield.”
Drain said he was locked in a prison cell when he was 13 and told investigators he’d been in and out of prison most of his life.
“My death sentence was handed down long ago,” he said.
INTERNET SOURCE:
https://www.facebook.com/VictimsFamiliesForTheDeathPenalty/posts/2799624206826194.... ….
https://www.dispatch.com/news/20200518/man-who-confessed-to-killing-inmate-gets-death-penalty
Joel Drain, who is tattooed across his neck and chin, decided to become a vigilante against Christopher Richardson
Warren County inmate gets death penalty for murder
LEBANON —
A prison inmate is headed for Ohio’s Death Row after a short trial in Warren County.
Joel Drain, 39, pleaded no contest to the murder charges and specifications filed against him for murdering another inmate in April 2019 and was sentenced to death on Monday by a three-judge panel.
Drain was charged with aggravated murder, murder and possession of a deadly weapon while under detention.
Drain, who was already serving 30 years to life in prison for aggravated murder, felonious assault and theft in Hancock County, was convicted of murdering prisoner Christopher M. Richardson at Warren Correctional Institution.
Drain beat Richardson, serving a four-year sentence for aggravated arson, with the motor from a desk fan, stomped on his throat and kicked a pencil into his head, left a cell in the prison outside Lebanon “a blood-bath,” according to Warren County Prosecutor David Fornshell.
The judges accepted Drain’s plea of no contest and sentenced him to die after 5 1/2 hour trial in Warren County Common Pleas Court.
Drain has been trying to waive his right to trial by jury and enter the no-context plea since February.
Asked about Drain’s reaction, Fornshell said, “Frankly he seemed somewhat disinterested or at least unaffected.”
In February, Judge Donald Oda II declined to accept a no-contest plea during a hearing Wednesday in Warren County Common Pleas Court.
But the judge said he would take steps toward accepting Drain’s plea, leaving his fate to the mercy of the court.
Drain asked Oda to accept his plea — against the advice of his lawyers — in a letter to the court.
Drain also wanted to waive mitigation of his sentence, during which his lawyers would bring a case against his execution - except for being allowed to make his own statement.
In response to Drain’s plea offer, his lawyers filed motions suggesting Drain was incompetent to stand trial, requesting a hearing on this issue and asking for a copy of Drain’s medical records for use in the hearing.
INTERNET SOURCE:
https://www.facebook.com/VictimsFamiliesForTheDeathPenalty/posts/2804385679683380…. ….
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| Joel Drain, who is tattooed across his neck and chin, decided to become a vigilante against Christopher Richardson |
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