Assignment of Capital Cases

Criminal cases in which an indictment or a count in an indictment charges the defendant with aggravated murder and contains one or more specifications of aggravating circumstances listed in R.C. 2929.04(A) shall be assigned to a judge of the court or division of the court who is qualified to hear the cases pursuant to either of the following methods: (A) Randomly assigned by lot among all judges who are qualified; (B) By a method that meets each of the following requirements: Assignments are made by lot from a pool consisting of the names of each (1) judge of the court or division who is eligible to hear the criminal cases; Upon receipt of such criminal case, the name of the assigned judge is (2) removed from the pool; (3) Upon the assignment of such criminal case to the second-to-last judge in the pool, the names of each judge of the court or division who is eligible to hear capital cases are added back into the pool.