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COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — A Cleveland man who was convicted of killing 11 women and sentenced to death deserves an open court hearing to challenge the admissibility of his hourslong police interrogation, his attorney told the state’s highest court Tuesday.

That hearing should be held even if it wouldn’t affect the outcome of a new trial, said Jeffrey Gamso, who represents Anthony Sowell.

“An open trial with the press and the public present imposes on everybody involved a greater sense of propriety and the importance of getting everything and doing everything right,” Gamso told the Supreme Court justices.

A Cuyahoga County prosecutor said the evidence against Sowell was overwhelming with or without the videotaped interrogation.

“The law and the facts are what they are,” said assistant prosecutor Christopher Schroeder. “They’re not going to change because a couple of people are sitting in the gallery in an open courtroom versus doing it in a closed courtroom.”

Sowell, 56, was indicted in 2009 and convicted and sentenced in 2011. Jurors found Sowell guilty of killing 11 women from June 2007 to July 2009. Police found their mostly nude bodies throughout his home after a woman escaped and said she had been raped in the house.

A decision isn’t expected for months. But even if the Ohio Supreme Court upholds Sowell’s death sentence, an execution is years away. Sowell could still appeal through the federal courts, and Ohio lacks lethal injection drugs.

Among the issues before justices was a 2010 hearing during which a Cleveland judge closed the courtroom while he heard arguments for and against allowing the videotaped interrogation, which lasts for more than 11 hours.

The judge ultimately allowed its use, and most of it was played during Sowell’s trial.

Justices seemed skeptical about another hearing. Justice Paul Pfeifer said it would be “total foolishness.” Justice Judi French questioned whether it would change anything.

Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor said Sowell’s attorneys seemed to want it both ways: arguing for more publicity but also saying the case should have been moved because of extensive pretrial publicity.

Sowell’s attorneys have also challenged his original lawyers’ approach at trial to raise doubts about Sowell’s guilt. His new attorneys say a better strategy would have been to concede Sowell’s overwhelming guilt and push for life without parole based on his background, including a chaotic childhood.

Sowell’s attorneys “repeatedly directed the jurors’ attention to gruesome and painfully damning evidence,” according to a 2012 filing by Gamso and Erika Cunliffe.

As a result, the attorneys looked desperate and jurors were likely irritated that it dragged out the trial, the filing said.

Schroeder said evidence in favor of sparing Sowell was slight, consisting mainly of his seven years as a U.S. Marine.

Nothing in case law or the constitution supports the argument that his attorneys shouldn’t have challenged the case against him, according to a 2013 filing by Cuyahoga County assistant prosecutors Katherine Mullin and Kristen Sobieski.

“Sowell had an absolute constitutional right to go to trial and to force the State to prove his guilt on every charge in the indictment beyond a reasonable doubt,” they said.

Prosecutors say Sowell’s victims were recovering or current drug addicts and most died of strangulation. Some had been decapitated, and the bodies of others were so badly decomposed that coroners couldn’t say with certainty how they died.

In interviews with police, Sowell said he targeted women who reminded him of his ex-girlfriend, who had been addicted to crack and left him shortly before the killings began.

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(Photo Source: AP)