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Beacon Journal
Inmate Gets Second Chance At Clemency Wed, Oct. 12, 2005
By JOHN McCARTHY COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — A death row inmate got a rare second chance Wednesday to ask for his life to be spared, his attorney telling parole board members they did not have all the evidence when they first recommended going ahead with execution. Gov. Bob Taft delayed the death sentence for John Spirko, convicted of killing a northeast Ohio postal worker, after reports that the state presented inaccurate information about what Spirko knew about the slaying and his whereabouts on the day it happened. For the first time since Ohio resumed executions in 1999, the Ohio Parole Board decided to hold a second clemency hearing. Defense attorney Thomas Hill said the board must "examine the totality of everything we now know." "There are just too, too many doubts," Hill said. Spirko, 59, says he didn't kill Betty Jane Mottinger in 1982. Mottinger, 48, was the postmistress in Elgin and was abducted and stabbed nearly 20 times, wrapped in a curtain and dumped in a field. Her body was found three weeks later. Hill said the defense would present new information later Wednesday, including a statement from Mottinger's niece who now believes Spirko did not kill his aunt. The prosecution was to state its case later Wednesday as well. The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer reported that Timothy Prichard, director of the attorney general's capital crimes office, made false statements and mischaracterized evidence at the first hearing in August. After that report, Attorney General Jim Petro defended the prosecution's presentation. Prichard told the parole board that a description of Mottinger's purse had to have come from Spirko because investigators didn't know what the missing purse looked like. But according to the case record, an investigator was given a very similar description of the purse by Mottinger's husband on the day his wife disappeared, 12 weeks before investigators discussed the purse with Spirko. Spirko was scheduled to die by injection on Sept. 20, but Taft ordered the execution delayed until Nov. 15. After the first hearing, the parole board had voted 6-3 against changing his death sentence to life in prison. Spirko's lawyers have asked for any documents from the U.S. Postal Inspection Service that involve an investigation into the behavior of former postal inspector Paul Hartman, the state's lead investigator and a star witness in the Spirko case. Gregory Duerr, a current postal inspector, wrote in a letter that more than a dozen colleagues filed complaints about Hartman in the late 1990s.
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