Death Penalty News

VIERA, Fla. (Court TV) — A Florida man will not face a potential death sentence for the death of a child after pleading no contest to multiple charges as part of a deal with prosecutors. Joshua Manns, 30, pleaded no contest to first-degree felony murder, aggravated manslaughter of a child, aggravated child abuse, and felony child abuse on Wednesday, court records show. Manns had initially denied any responsibility for the death of 3-year-old Jameson Nance, who had been left in his care when he died. On June 11, 2021, Nance’s mother, Erica Dotson, called 911 after Manns called her and said something was wrong with her son. She said that when she arrived home, Manns was nowhere in sight, but Jameson was “lying on the bathroom floor with his arm stuck in the upward position.”

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 afte...

My name is Joel Drain. I am the person who killed him. A month after writing those two sentences in a letter to an Ohio newspaper, Drain was indicted by a grand jury in Warren County. He was charged with aggravated murder and two other felonies.  Now, he faces the death penalty, and his trial is scheduled to start today. During a pretrial hearing in February, a public defender called Drain one of the most intelligent people he knows. So why did the 38-year-old confess to a crime in the newspaper? “Beat him. Stabbed him. And strangled him," Drain wrote in July. "It's all black & white." Drain was already serving a potential life sentence for the 2016 stabbing and strangling of a man in Northwest Ohio. Shortly before that, he had been arrested for stabbing his father. Then, in April of 2019, Drain was accused of killing another inmate while incarcerated at the Warren Correctional Institution. Christopher Richardson, 29, was serving four y...