LAKEWOOD, Ohio -- Francis E. Sweeney Sr., who died Sunday, fought on the Ohio Supreme Court for underprivileged students, injured workers and other people he considered victims. The Lakewood ...

Francis E. Sweeney, the former Ohio Supreme Court justice who wrote a landmark 1997 case declaring the state's school funding system unconstitutional, died Sunday night. He was 77.

In 1976, Francis E. Sweeney presided over perhaps the most notorious trial of the decade, the case of John Johnson, who brutally abducted, raped and murdered 8-year-old Melissa Hinke. The case was ...

The killer was never formally identified or arrested, but police believe it was a surgeon named Francis E. Sweeney, who would have had access to facilities to dismember bodies and known how to do so.