A retired appellate judge from Columbus will preside over the upcoming retrial of the Megan Goff murder case.

The Ohio Supreme Court has assigned Patrick Martin McGrath to take the bench for the new trial currently scheduled to begin Aug. 1. McGrath is retired from the Ohio 10th District Court of Appeals in Franklin County. He was elected to the bench in the general election in 2004 and retired at the end of his term on Jan. 1, 2011.

On Dec. 30, the high court ruled unanimously that Goff’s constitutional rights had been violated during her bench trial before visiting judge Fred Crow from Meigs County. Goff admitted to shooting her estranged husband at his Hamilton Township home on March 18, 2006. She was charged with shooting Bill Goff 15 times in the head and upper torso. During her trial Goff had offered the battered woman syndrome to show that she had acted in self-defense.

Crow found the young mother of two guilty and sentenced her to a minimum of 33 years in prison at the Ohio Reformatory for Women at Marysville.

Goff appealed her conviction before the Ohio Fourth District Court of Appeals in 2009. However that court rejected Goff’s arguments in a 3-0 decision.

Goff’s appeal centered on whether the state had the right to compel Goff to submit to a psychiatric exam by its experts when the defendant was asserting a battered woman syndrome defense. At trial the state’s expert had testified that he could not form an opinion on whether the woman suffered from the syndrome. However, he did repeat statements Goff made during his examination and described what he called inconsistencies in statements Goff made to him and to the police.

The supreme court ruled that while the exam is permitted, trial testimony must be limited to the information on the syndrome and the defendant’s actions as they pertained to the syndrome.

Earlier this month Crow pulled himself off the new trial citing health reasons. Last week Common Pleas Court Judge Charles Cooper, the county’s presiding judge, recommended Judge Alan Travis to take Crow’s place.

However Travis, also retired from the 10th District Court, was unavailable, according to Bret Crow, spokesman for the high court.

McGrath began his career handling personal injury and worker’s compensation law cases in a private firm before joining the Columbus City Attorney’s staff. In 1988, he became a judge for the Franklin County Common Pleas Court before assuming his place on the appellate court.

A pre-trial, which was scheduled by Crow, is still on the docket for March 4. Goff remains at the Scioto County Jail under a $2.5 million bond.

Assistant Prosecutor Robert Anderson said he had no comment on the appointment and Paula Brown, Goff’s attorney from the Columbus firm of Kravitz, Brown and Dortch, could not be reached by press time.