A lawyer told the state Supreme Court yesterday that his client’s death penalty case was the weakest one ever to go before the high court, alleging that the jury was biased and that key evidence was improperly withheld from the trial.

Justices heard the appeal of former Torrington resident Eduardo Santiago, 31, who prosecutors say agreed in 2000 to kill a West Hartford man in exchange for a pink-striped snowmobile with a broken clutch. He was sentenced to death by lethal injection in 2005 after a jury convicted him, despite no clear evidence that he was the one who pulled the rifle trigger.

Two other men are serving life prison sentences for the killing of Joseph Niwinski, 45, who was shot in the head while sleeping in his home.

Santiago’s lawyer, Assistant Public Defender Mark Rademacher, told the Supreme Court that there was no way a reasonable jury could have condemned Santiago. The defense presented 25 mitigating factors, including Santiago’s troubled childhood, for jurors to consider against the death penalty, while the state based its argument for execution on one aggravating factor, that Niwinski was killed in a murder-for-hire plot.

A man charged under an Ohio fetal homicide law with trying to force his pregnant girlfriend at gunpoint to get an abortion pleaded guilty Thursday to attempted murder, weapons and abduction counts.

Dominic Holt-Reid pulled a gun Oct. 6 on girlfriend Yolanda Burgess, who was three months pregnant, and forced her to drive to an abortion clinic, police said. Burgess, who was 26 at the time, did not go through with the procedure but instead passed a note to a clinic employee, who called police.

Prosecutors had brought their case against Holt-Reid using the state's 1996 law that says a person can be found guilty of murder for causing the unlawful termination of a pregnancy.

Holt-Reid, 28, faces up to 20 years in prison and a $40,000 fine. A presentencing investigation was ordered, and the next hearing was scheduled for June 9.

Holt-Reid had previously pleaded not guilty to charges of attempted murder, kidnapping, improper handling of a firearm and carrying a concealed weapon. His guilty pleas in Franklin County Common Pleas Court came a day after Prosecutor Ron O'Brien told The Associated Press in a statement that a plea deal was in the works.