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Dayton Daily News
EDITORIAL 10.24.2005 Parole Board Report Useless Gov. Bob Taft needs to know what chance there is that a man scheduled to be executed by lethal injection may die for a crime he didn't commit. Ohio's parole board has a duty to advise him on such matters. But a majority of the board last week let down Gov. Taft — and the public. It recommended that an execution go forward without giving the governor any practical assessment of the chances that the death penalty may be about to be administered in error. The recommendation came in the case of John Spirko, who is scheduled to be executed next month. He was convicted of the 1982 murder of Betty Jane Mottinger, a postmaster in the rural village of Elgin. The question before the board was whether the governor should grant Mr. Spirko some form of clemency — such as commuting his sentence from death to life without the possibility of parole. Two times during the past 60 days the parole board held a day-long hearing in his case. Each time parole board members heard undisputed evidence that no physical, forensic or scientific evidence connects Mr. Spirko to the crime. They learned that the sole eyewitness putting Mr. Spirko within the general vicinity of the crime testified that he was only 70 percent sure. They heard that the state presented its case to the jury on the theory that Mr. Spirko had an accomplice — but prosecutors never pursued charges against the alleged accomplice, and they withheld evidence that he may have been hundreds of miles from the crime scene at the time of the murder. The parole board also learned that key to the state's case were incriminating statements Mr. Spirko allegedly made during prison interviews. But the statements were not recorded. Rather, they appeared in the notes of a postal inspector whose reliability has since been seriously challenged. An investigator from the Wyandot County prosecuting attorney's office came forward to tell the parole board that he's concerned Mr. Spirko might be executed for a crime he didn't commit. He described how, in 1997, a criminal suspect in an unrelated case revealed to him the identity a third party who allegedly admitted to murdering Ms. Mottinger. The investigator referred the information to federal authorities, who never followed up. A lawyer at Northwestern University School of Law's Center on Wrongful Convictions presented a detailed report explaining his view that the state's case against Mr. Spirko is inherently unreliable. Former Director of the FBI William Sessions, joined by three retired federal judges, expressed the same view. Six of the parole board's nine members voted against clemency, but didn't address much of the evidence that calls the conviction into question. They are convinced of Mr. Spirko's guilt, but their conclusion lacks credibility because it ignores this question: How should the governor weigh the risk that they are wrong? Email GOV. BOB TAFT
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