Retrial slated this week for man charged with 1999 murder of 2 Ohio students in western Pa.

Retrial looms in murder of 2 Ohio students in Pa.

WASHINGTON, Pa. — A former Pittsburgh man again faces a possible death penalty in a retrial in the shooting deaths of two Ohio college students a decade ago.

Twenty-nine-year-old Terrell Yarbrough is scheduled to go on trial this week in the 1999 deaths of Franciscan University students Aaron Land and Brian Muha. Prosecutors say Land and Muha were kidnapped from their Steubenville, Ohio, home and driven to the Pittsburgh suburb of Robinson Township, where they were shot.

An Ohio jury convicted Yarbrough in the slayings and sentenced him to death. But in 2004 the Ohio Supreme Court overturned the conviction, saying he and co-defendant Nathan Herring were tried in the wrong state.

Defense attorney Kenneth Haber said he doesn’t believe the evidence proves that his client was the triggerman, and he will submit evidence that Yarbrough is on the borderline of mental retardation.

Information from: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, www.post-gazette.com