Anthony Kirkland was found on Saturday, March 7, 2009, by police officers searching the woods and abandoned houses of Winton Hills, a Cincinnati neighborhood, for a 13-year-old girl who had gone out jogging and had not come home. He was sitting under a stand of fir trees. In his pockets officers found a purple watch and an iPod engraved with the missing girl's name, Esme. Her body was found nearby at about three the next morning.
Over the following day he told Cincinnati detectives about Esme Kenney and then about three other deaths that police had been unable to solve: Casonya Crawford, a 14-year-old girl, and Mary Jo Newton, 45, both found in Avondale in 2006, and a woman whose remains had lain unidentified since 2008, and whom his own memory allowed investigators to name as Kimya Rolison. He had already served 16 years in an Ohio prison for killing Leola Douglas in 1987.
In 2010 he pleaded guilty to murdering the two women, and a Hamilton County jury convicted him of the aggravated murders of the two girls, with other charges, and recommended death. The Supreme Court of Ohio upheld that sentence in 2014, then set it aside in 2016 after a fight over the prosecutor's closing argument. A second jury recommended death again in 2018, and the state's high court affirmed the new sentence in 2020. As of October 2026 he is held at the Ohio State Penitentiary, in a state that has not carried out an execution since Governor Mike DeWine took office.
Ohio prison records give Kirkland's date of birth as September 13, 1968. Little about his early years appears in the public record outside the evidence his lawyers offered when they asked two juries to spare his life.
According to that evidence, summarized by the Supreme Court of Ohio in 2014, his father drank heavily and was violently abusive toward the boy and toward his mother. Kirkland was beaten, and he witnessed his father's violence toward his mother. His father left the family when Kirkland was about nine or ten. His mother later remarried and found help for herself and for some of the younger children, but not for Kirkland, who was the eldest. He was using alcohol and drugs heavily by his early teens and did not seek treatment for depression until he was an adult.
The defense psychiatrist at the 2010 trial, Dr. Scott Bresler of the University of Cincinnati, interviewed Kirkland, his mother and two of his younger sisters. He testified about abuse within the family, including abuse of the children. At the 2018 resentencing a clinical psychologist, Dr. Patti van Eys, counted nine adverse childhood experiences in his history and diagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder with dissociation.
Leola Douglas was 27 when she was killed in May 1987. She was a twin; her brother told WCPO in 2018 that more than three decades later the loss still left him feeling helpless, and he asked that she not be forgotten among the later victims.
Kirkland was 18. Reports differ on who she was to him. Associated Press stories and WCPO described her as his girlfriend. In the 2018 resentencing, as summarized by the Supreme Court of Ohio, the prosecutor cross-examined a defense expert about a presentence report that described the May 1987 homicide as the killing of the girlfriend of Kirkland's uncle. He was not convicted of any sexual offense in her death.
He was charged with murder. Under a plea agreement he pleaded guilty to reduced charges, which police and FOX19 identified in 2009 as voluntary manslaughter and aggravated arson. The Associated Press reported the sentence as 7 to 25 years; WCPO has described it as a 25-year sentence. He served 16 years.
In prison Kirkland earned a GED and an associate degree. His record inside was poor. FOX19 reported in March 2009, from parole records, that he had been placed in solitary confinement for "disciplinary control" 21 times between 1998 and 2003, four of them in the nine months before his release, for breaking rules or fighting. The 2014 opinion records that he threatened prison officials and staff while he was held.
On February 4, 1999, the Ohio Parole Board turned him down, citing the violent crime he had pleaded guilty to and his poor adjustment in prison, and set his next review ten years away. That was not how things worked out. Ohio prisoners had sued the Adult Parole Authority and won a ruling that parole guidelines had to be applied according to the offense a prisoner was convicted of, not the crime he was believed to have committed. For Kirkland that meant the guidelines for voluntary manslaughter, which, the parole board's chair told FOX19 in 2009, called for "a lesser range" of time than those for murder. He was given a new hearing in 2003 and released that year. FOX19 reported that of about 2,500 cases the board reheard after the ruling, about 1,400 prisoners were released, Kirkland among them.
The years after his release were marked by arrests. WCPO's investigative team reported in 2017 that about two years after he came out he was arrested on charges that included burglary, and that a jury acquitted him of the most serious charge, which involved a neighbor. The Associated Press reported in 2009 that he had been acquitted of several charges since 2005 and convicted in 2007 of two counts of unlawful restraint. WCPO also reported that in 2007 he was arrested after threatening his infant son, an episode that ended in a standoff with a police SWAT team.
In September 2007 a 13-year-old girl in the household where Kirkland was staying reported him to the authorities. He was convicted of importuning, with other charges; the Associated Press put the conviction in March 2008, and he served about a year. As part of the sentence the state assigned him to a halfway house run by Volunteers of America, the Pogue Rehabilitation Center in Cincinnati. The Associated Press reported that he was jailed until October 20, 2008.
He was expelled from the halfway house on February 27, 2009, after a reported fight with another resident. The man declined to press charges, and the center's president said staff had called police. According to a letter later sent by Cincinnati City Council members, his parole officer was not told for three days. Court records described by FOX19 accused Kirkland of breaking into that man's home on March 1, 2009, and stabbing him. When police found him six days later he was wanted on that charge.
Casonya Crawford, called Sharee by her friends, was 14, an eighth grader who lived with her grandmother in the Clifton neighborhood. Friends from Hoffman Elementary told FOX19 that she wanted to be a doctor.
She left her grandmother's home in the early hours of May 3, 2006, and did not return. Her grandmother reported her missing on May 4. On May 9, 2006, her body was found in Avondale. It took police a couple of days to identify her; dental X-rays confirmed who she was. Her grandmother told FOX19 she wanted justice "sooner than later." The case stayed open for nearly three years.
Mary Jo Newton was 45. She was found in Avondale on June 15, 2006, about five weeks after Casonya, and identified by dental records. Her death too went unsolved until Kirkland talked to detectives in March 2009. The court record and news reports say little about her life beyond her age and the fact that Kirkland had known her before she died.
Kimya Rolison was a mother of two, according to FOX19. Her age at death is reported as 27 by FOX19 in 2009 and WCPO in 2018, and as 25 by the Associated Press in 2016 and by FOX19 in 2018 and 2020. The Supreme Court of Ohio wrote in 2020 that she had been missing since October 2006; Kirkland placed her death in December 2006, and prosecutors charged it as a December 2006 murder.
Her remains were found in North Fairmount in 2008, in the spring according to the 2014 opinion and in June according to FOX19. She could not be identified, and she remained unnamed for nearly a year.
The two 2006 deaths had brought Kirkland to the attention of Cincinnati police well before 2009. On March 15, 2007, Detective Keith Witherell interviewed him about Casonya Crawford and Mary Jo Newton. Police had no forensic evidence and no admissions, the Supreme Court of Ohio wrote, and could not charge him. He remained free, apart from his time in custody on other charges, for almost two more years.
Esme Kenney was 13, a seventh grader at Cincinnati's School for the Creative and Performing Arts, where she was a double major in cello and voice. Classmates told FOX19 she was always kind and smiling, and her family said she had many talents and had only recently begun to "come into her own." CityBeat later described her as an aspiring artist and musician.
On the afternoon of Saturday, March 7, 2009, she went out jogging near her home in Winton Hills. When she did not come back, her mother called 911, at 4:21 p.m. Officers began searching nearby abandoned houses and woods. Among the trees they found a man sitting alone. Knives were visible in his pants pocket, so they disarmed and searched him, and found her watch and her iPod. He gave a false name and said he had found the things in the woods. After he was read his rights, and after database checks on that name came back empty, he gave his real name, about 20 minutes later. He was taken to a police station while the search went on. At about 3 a.m. on March 8 searchers found Esme's body nearby. The coroner gave the cause of death as ligature strangulation.
The Associated Press reported that Kirkland was arrested on March 8. He was arraigned on Monday, March 9, and held on a $5.3 million bond.
Forensic evidence tied him to her death: DNA consistent with Esme's was found on him and on his clothing, and partial shoe prints in the woods matched the type of sneaker he was wearing.
Kirkland's first recorded interview, with Detective Witherell on the morning of March 8, lasted more than four hours. News reports later described the confession as a whole as running eight or nine hours. It was videotaped and played to both juries.
His account of Esme's death moved in stages. At first he said he did not know why he had been arrested and assumed it was about old warrants. He denied seeing any girl jogging and said he had found the watch and iPod. Then he admitted meeting her and said they had collided and that there had been a confrontation, but that he had left her alive. Told her body had been found, he said he could not remember, then again that she had been alive when he left. Then he blamed a man he called Pedro. Pressed, he admitted he had known she was dead. He still would not say directly that he had killed her; she died, he said, "because of my hatred."
In a recording played at the 2018 resentencing he gave a reason. He said he had flown into a rage when he saw, in Esme's face, the mother of his son, and that his resentment at being kept from his son had turned to rage when she bumped into him on her run. "It was a combination of a lot of things," he told Witherell, naming his sense of helplessness and hopelessness.
About two hours after the first session ended, Detective William Hilbert took over, and Kirkland talked about 2006. He said he had known Mary Jo Newton, that they had argued while driving around, and that he had strangled her. He said he had met Casonya Crawford late at night, had offered her money to talk with him, and that after an argument he strangled her.
Half an hour into a third session, detectives asked him about the unidentified remains found in 2008. He had been saying there were three. Then he said there had been one more: a woman he knew as Kim, whom he said he had met in December 2006 and stabbed after an argument.
One detail from that third interview gave the woman back her name. Kirkland recalled that on the night she died, a uniformed officer had stopped the two of them in Clifton and told them they could not be in a park after dark. An investigator went through a month of license checks that Cincinnati officers had sent to California and found one, run by a Clifton officer on December 22, 2006, on a California license belonging to Kimya Rolison. The date of birth roughly matched what Kirkland remembered seeing. Her family confirmed she was missing, and dental records confirmed that the remains were hers.
The Supreme Court of Ohio later gave his confession some weight in mitigation because it solved these deaths, though in 2020 it noted that he had given it haltingly.
On March 17, 2009, a Hamilton County grand jury returned a 12-count indictment. It charged four counts of aggravated murder with death specifications, covering Esme Kenney and Casonya Crawford, along with other charges in both girls' deaths; and murder and gross abuse of a corpse in the death of Mary Jo Newton. Prosecutor Joseph Deters said he would seek the death penalty. "He needs to be executed," he told reporters, calling Kirkland a serial killer. Kirkland, 40, pleaded not guilty in the Kenney case.
On June 22, 2009, Deters announced murder and gross abuse of a corpse charges in the death of Kimya Rolison, crediting the Cincinnati police and the Hamilton County coroner's office with making the connection. That case was indicted separately and later joined to the others.
Esme Kenney's death set off an argument in Cincinnati about how Kirkland had come to be free. A former prosecutor told FOX19 that under the law in force at the time of his 1987 crime he could have been held for all 25 years, and that he was paroled after 16 under the older law. Cincinnati City Council members wrote to Governor Ted Strickland asking him to close the Pogue Center, move its residents and investigate its operations; Councilman Chris Monzel said he would not stop until it was closed. The center's operator defended its handling of the February fight. WCPO reported in 2017 that the center was still operating as a reentry facility, and that Volunteers of America had said its staff was not equipped to handle violent residents. Leola Douglas's brother told WCPO that Kirkland "should never have gotten out of jail."
The case was tried in the Hamilton County Court of Common Pleas before Judge Charles Kubicki Jr. On the first morning of trial, Kirkland pleaded guilty to the murders of Mary Jo Newton and Kimya Rolison and to two counts of abuse of a corpse. Those crimes did not carry the death penalty. The remaining counts, concerning the two girls, went to the jury of eight women and four men.
The jury saw his videotaped interviews. It also heard from the girl in the 2007 importuning case. The judge admitted her testimony on one of the non-murder counts in Casonya Crawford's case, as evidence of intent and motive, and told the jury to consider it for that limited purpose. Under the court's rulings the jury did not learn about Leola Douglas's death or about the importuning conviction itself until the penalty phase.
On March 12, 2010, the jury found Kirkland guilty of every remaining count, including aggravated murder of both girls, with other charges, and every death specification. Among them were course-of-conduct specifications, which tied the girls' deaths to the killings of the two women. Prosecutors argued that this made death the appropriate sentence.
Prosecutors called no new witnesses in the penalty phase. The defense called one: Dr. Bresler, the psychiatrist. He diagnosed an antisocial personality disorder and an adjustment disorder and, asked to put it in lay terms, described Kirkland as a psychopath, a condition he traced to an abusive childhood. He set out the history of violence in the home and the substance abuse.
Kirkland then read an unsworn statement. He accepted responsibility for the four deaths. He said he had become so angry he could not control himself, and that this was no excuse. He said he wanted to be locked away for good. "I don't blame you if you kill me, I don't deserve to live, but please spare my life," he told the jurors, according to FOX19's report that day.
In his closing argument, Deters reminded the jury that Kirkland had already pleaded guilty to two murders and would spend his life in prison for them. "So I guess Casonya and Esme are just freebies for him," he said. The defense objected; the judge did not sustain the objection. Deters also asked the jurors to imagine what the girls had felt in their last minutes, described matters about Casonya's family that were not in evidence, and invited the jury to weigh the nature of the murders themselves as if they were aggravating circumstances.
The jury recommended death for both girls' murders. On March 31, 2010, Judge Kubicki sentenced Kirkland to death for the aggravated murders of Esme Kenney and Casonya Crawford, and to 70 years to life for the murders of Mary Jo Newton and Kimya Rolison. Kubicki later arranged counseling for the jurors. He said years afterward that he felt sorry for any new jurors who would have to hear the evidence again.
In February 2011, Kirkland's lawyers asked for a new trial, arguing that his trial lawyers had been ineffective, chiefly for not seeking a change of venue in view of the press coverage.
Kirkland's automatic appeal went directly to the Supreme Court of Ohio. The court heard argument on September 11, 2013, and decided the case on May 13, 2014, by a vote of four to three.
Justice Judith L. French, writing for the majority, agreed with Kirkland on the closing argument. The prosecutor's penalty-phase remarks were improper, the court held, and they had prejudicially affected Kirkland's substantial rights. The "freebies" remark wrongly suggested that he would go unpunished for the girls' deaths unless the jury chose death. The prosecutor had also speculated about what the victims went through, relied on facts outside the record, and treated the nature of the crimes as an aggravating circumstance.
But the majority did not order a new sentencing hearing. Under Ohio law the Supreme Court weighs aggravating and mitigating circumstances for itself in every death case, and the majority held that this independent review could cure the prosecutor's errors. It set the improper arguments aside, weighed the case anew, and concluded that the aggravating circumstances outweighed the mitigating factors, Kirkland's troubled and abusive childhood among them. It rejected his nine other propositions of law, including his challenge to the testimony from the 2007 case and his claim that his trial lawyers had been ineffective. Chief Justice Maureen O'Connor and Justices Terrence O'Donnell and Sharon L. Kennedy joined the opinion.
Three justices disagreed. Justice Judith Ann Lanzinger agreed that the convictions should stand but would have sent the case back for a new sentencing hearing, because an appellate court's own weighing could not cure misconduct that had tainted a jury's recommendation. Justice Paul E. Pfeifer would also have ordered resentencing; he would have excluded the testimony from the 2007 case as improper character evidence and reversed one of the non-murder convictions in Casonya Crawford's case for insufficient evidence. Justice William M. O'Neill dissented in full. He wrote that Kirkland deserved to be punished, even to be imprisoned for life without release, but that the death penalty was cruel and unusual and that the majority's approach violated the Sixth Amendment right to a jury, under Ring v. Arizona.
In January 2016 the United States Supreme Court decided Hurst v. Florida, holding that a jury, not a judge, must find each fact necessary to impose a death sentence. On March 3, 2016, Kirkland's lawyers asked the Supreme Court of Ohio to reopen his sentence. They relied on Hurst and argued again that the court's own review could not cure the prejudice from the prosecutor's argument.
On May 4, 2016, the court granted the motion, vacated both death sentences and sent the case back to Hamilton County for a new mitigation and sentencing hearing before a new jury under section 2929.06(B) of the Ohio Revised Code. The vote was four to three. In reporting the decision, the Associated Press quoted Justice Lanzinger's view that "due process requires that a jury be free from prejudice" before it recommends death. Deters said he would ask the court to reconsider. WCPO's investigative team reported that his office believed the justices had misread the argument.
The resentencing took more than two years to reach a jury. At a hearing on December 14, 2016, Judge Kubicki recused himself, and Kirkland was assigned a new lawyer; WCPO reported that his earlier lawyer had withdrawn because of a heavy load of other capital cases. "I have hurt so many people with these four murders," Kirkland said in court that day, according to FOX19. WCPO reported in December 2016 that the new hearing would begin on May 8, 2017. It began in July 2018, before Judge Patrick Dinkelacker.
Deters was unrepentant. Shortly before the new hearing he told WCPO that holding it was "total nonsense," that the court had "lost its way," and that he would make the same argument again. He said Esme's mother had been "in Hell this entire time."
The new hearing began in late July 2018. The parties agreed that the jury had to accept the 2010 guilty verdicts and would decide only between life in prison and death on the counts concerning the two girls. Before testimony began, the jurors made a site visit in Winton Hills.
Casonya's grandmother testified on the first day. Kimya Rolison's father testified the next, followed by Esme's mother, whose evidence was given by video deposition from Seattle because she chose not to return to Cincinnati. The jury heard Detective Witherell describe his interrogation and watched hours of Kirkland's recorded interviews, including his account of all four deaths.
This time the defense presented a fuller case in mitigation. Dr. Joseph Wu testified by video deposition that brain scans and Kirkland's history showed several traumatic brain injuries, among them a fall from a bicycle in 2004 and a car accident in 2006. Dr. van Eys testified about post-traumatic stress disorder and the abuse of his childhood. The defense argued that Kirkland had an untreated brain disease, injury or defect, compounded by addiction. The state answered with three doctors, Chadwick Wright, Alan Waxman and Daniel Boulter, who testified that the scans were normal.
Kirkland made another unsworn statement. He described the abuse he had suffered as a child and his early drinking and drug use, said he was sorry for the pain he had caused, and said he was not asking for mercy, forgiveness or absolution. "I do not deserve to live, but please spare my life," he said again.
On August 6, 2018, after a little more than two hours of deliberation, the jury of six white men, four white women and two Black women unanimously recommended death. Casonya's grandmother, who had laughed at his plea in the courtroom, told WCPO afterward that she was not sorry to hear the verdict, and that he should "lay down and take your punishment." On August 28, 2018, Judge Dinkelacker sentenced Kirkland to death for both girls' murders. Kirkland, who had shown no emotion at the verdict, told the court he could not explain "my atrocious acts." WCPO reported that an execution date of March 7, 2019, the tenth anniversary of Esme's death, was set; his lawyer said he would appeal.
The appeal went again to the Supreme Court of Ohio, which heard argument on March 10, 2020. Kirkland's lawyer, Timothy McKenna, raised 11 propositions of law: that jury selection should have been conducted individually, that jurors opposed to the death penalty had been wrongly excused, that evidence about the Newton and Rolison murders had been inflammatory, that a concealed stun cuff had been used on him in court, and more. Ronald Springman Jr., for the Hamilton County Prosecutor's Office, answered that the evidence of the other murders was needed to prove the course-of-conduct specification.
On August 18, 2020, the court affirmed the death sentences. Justice French again wrote for the court, joined by Chief Justice O'Connor and Justices Kennedy, Fischer, DeWine and Stewart; Justice Donnelly concurred in the judgment only. Kirkland, the court wrote, "failed to identify any significant error; he was resentenced in a fundamentally fair proceeding."
The court found two flaws in the prosecution's closing argument this time as well. The prosecutor had again speculated about a victim's final thoughts, and the trial court should have sustained the objection; and he had made a personal attack on Dr. Wu before withdrawing it and turning to the substance of the testimony. Neither, the court held, denied Kirkland a fair hearing. In its own weighing it gave no weight to Wu's opinions, little weight to the childhood trauma evidence given Kirkland's age when he killed, and some weight to his confession and his history of alcohol and drug use. It concluded that the aggravating circumstances outweighed the mitigating factors beyond a reasonable doubt and that the sentences were proportionate to those in similar cases. His lawyer declined to comment to the Associated Press.
Kirkland is held at the Ohio State Penitentiary under sentence of death, according to the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction's records in October 2026, which list his aggregate sentence as death and his admission date as April 1, 2010. A June 2023 list of Ohio's death row prisoners placed him at the Chillicothe Correctional Institution at that time.
No execution has taken place. Governor Mike DeWine has postponed executions during his tenure, citing a shortage of lethal-injection drugs, the only method Ohio law allows, and the state has carried out no execution since he took office. On June 16, 2026, DeWine asked the legislature to abolish the death penalty and said that if lawmakers did not act, they could leave the question to Ohio's voters. Ohio had 109 people on death row as of June 15, 2026, WTVG reported.
Esme Kenney was remembered at a memorial service held by her school at the Aronoff Center on March 10, 2009, and at her church, St. John's Unitarian Universalist, the next day. The school's flag flew at half-staff, and students left cards, posters and teddy bears by her locker. In 2010 her family and members of the school community raised money for a permanent memorial, a suspended glass piece for the atrium of the school's new building in Over-the-Rhine. Benefit concerts were held at the Northside Tavern in January 2010 and, as "Esme's Blues," at the 20th Century Theater in Oakley in April 2010, and a composition was dedicated to her memory at the MusicNOW festival. WCPO reported in 2017 that her family had been divided over the death penalty and had largely kept away from the media.
Leola Douglas's twin brother said in 2018 that he supported the death penalty for Kirkland and planned to attend any execution. He blamed "the system" for letting Kirkland out.
How many deaths. Kirkland has been convicted in five deaths: Leola Douglas's as voluntary manslaughter, and the four from 2006 to 2009 as murder or aggravated murder. News reports call him a convicted killer of five women, though two of the five were girls. No other killing has been charged against him or attributed to him in the reports.
Leola Douglas. Her relationship to Kirkland is described differently: his girlfriend (Associated Press, WCPO) or his uncle's girlfriend (the prosecutor's 2018 cross-examination, as summarized by the Supreme Court of Ohio). He was not convicted of a sexual offense in her death. The 1987 sentence is reported as 7 to 25 years and as 25 years. One 2018 WCPO report misspells her surname.
Kimya Rolison. Her age is reported as both 25 and 27. She was reported missing in October 2006 according to the 2020 opinion, while the killing was charged and described as December 2006. The 2014 Court News Ohio summary places her death in 2008, the year her remains were found; the opinion and the indictment place it in December 2006.
The arrest date. The Supreme Court of Ohio describes Kirkland being found and taken to a police station during the search on March 7, 2009; the Associated Press reported his arrest as March 8.
Release year. FOX19 and the Associated Press put his parole in 2003.
The defense case in 2010. WCPO's 2017 report said the defense called no witnesses at the first trial; the 2014 opinion and FOX19's report from the courtroom show that it called Dr. Bresler in the penalty phase.
Brain injury. Kirkland's experts in 2018 testified to brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder; the state's experts testified that his scans were normal, and the Supreme Court of Ohio gave the brain-injury evidence no weight.
September 13, 1968: Anthony Kirkland is born (ODRC record).
May 1987: Leola Douglas, 27, is killed. Kirkland, 18, later pleads guilty to voluntary manslaughter and aggravated arson.
February 4, 1999: The Ohio Parole Board denies parole and sets the next review ten years away.
2003: After a court ruling on Ohio parole guidelines, he is given a new hearing and released, having served 16 years.
May 3, 2006: Casonya Crawford, 14, leaves her grandmother's home and does not return; she is reported missing May 4.
May 9, 2006: Casonya Crawford is found in Avondale.
June 15, 2006: Mary Jo Newton, 45, is found in Avondale.
December 2006: Kimya Rolison is killed; a Clifton officer runs her California license on December 22, 2006.
March 15, 2007: Detective Keith Witherell interviews Kirkland about the 2006 deaths; there is no evidence to charge him.
September 2007: The importuning offense against a 13-year-old girl; he is later convicted and serves about a year.
2008: Kimya Rolison's remains are found in North Fairmount (spring or June, by different sources).
October 20, 2008: Kirkland is released from jail, per the Associated Press.
February 27, 2009: He is expelled from the Pogue Center halfway house.
March 1, 2009: He is accused of breaking into a man's home and stabbing him.
March 7, 2009: Esme Kenney, 13, goes jogging near her home in Winton Hills; police find Kirkland with her watch and iPod.
March 8, 2009: Her body is found at about 3 a.m.; Kirkland confesses in recorded interviews to her death and three others.
March 17, 2009: Twelve-count indictment; Deters announces he will seek death.
June 22, 2009: Kirkland is charged in Kimya Rolison's death.
March 12, 2010: After guilty pleas on the first morning of trial to the Newton and Rolison murders, the jury convicts him on all remaining counts.
March 31, 2010: Judge Charles Kubicki Jr. imposes death for the girls' murders and 70 years to life for the women's.
May 13, 2014: The Supreme Court of Ohio affirms, 4 to 3, despite finding the prosecutor's closing improper.
March 3, 2016: Kirkland moves for resentencing, citing Hurst v. Florida.
May 4, 2016: The court vacates the death sentences and orders a new sentencing hearing before a jury.
December 14, 2016: Judge Kubicki recuses himself; Kirkland gets a new lawyer.
July 2018: The resentencing hearing begins.
August 6, 2018: The new jury recommends death.
August 28, 2018: Judge Patrick Dinkelacker sentences Kirkland to death.
March 10, 2020: Oral argument in the Supreme Court of Ohio.
August 18, 2020: The Supreme Court of Ohio affirms the death sentences.
June 16, 2026: Governor DeWine asks Ohio's legislature to abolish the death penalty.
October 25, 2026: Kirkland is held at the Ohio State Penitentiary under sentence of death (ODRC record).