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The Lima News
Spirko Has More Than His Defense Team Fighting For His Life 11/13/2005
By GREG SOWINSKI ELGIN — John Spirko has had two execution dates postponed in recent months, the second of which will pass Tuesday. Twice the governor, on the advice of the attorney general, has postponed the execution based on challenges to his conviction in the 1982 abduction and murder of Elgin Postmaster Betty Jane Mottinger. Spirko’s case has become the most widely publicized death penalty case in Ohio since 1999 when Ohio executed its first inmate in more than 35 years. Since the 1999 execution of Wilford Berry, the state has executed 17 other inmates. Although all have been publicized, none have gained the attention that Spirko has received. One of the groups that joined in fighting the execution is the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University led by its legal Director Steven Drizin. Drizin became involved after a reporter for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, who has written a number of articles challenging the conviction, contacted him. The reporter was troubled by the conviction and asked Drizin to review the case file, Drizin said. Drizin agreed. “I was very troubled by the so-called confession of Spirko,” Drizin said. “I felt I had to get involved. At that point, I contacted Spirko’s attorneys and said, ‘What can we do to help?’” That confession is not recorded on audio or videotape. It consists of notes by an investigator and includes word additions written above sentences with arrows pointing to a place of insert, he said. Spirko’s confession came through a series of interviews after he had contacted investigators who had been chasing one unproductive lead after another. Spirko was not even on the radar screen until he called offering to trade information for help in a criminal case that landed him in jail in Toledo. Investigators said the confessions contained “information only the killer would know.” Drizin said he is troubled by that because the confessions did not lead investigators to additional evidence or tell them something they didn’t know. “There was no independent evidence to corroborate it,” he said. The Center on Wrongful Convictions was formed in 1999 and since then its attorney have helped exonerate 11 of 17 people on Illinois’ death row. They also have helped in as many as 50 cases, Drizin estimated. The involvement of the center can be as simple as a letter to a court containing an opinion on a case to taking on a case and representing an inmate, including at a new trial, Drizin said. The center has three attorneys, including Drizin, and does not take every case that comes its way. There is criteria, which includes inmates who maintain their innocence and have at least 10 years left on their sentence or are facing the death penalty. Ohio Northern University Law Professor Victor Streib said groups such as Drizin’s typically serve as an outside expert. There are various such groups throughout the country including a lesser-known group at Ohio Northern, he said. Former Allen County Prosecutor David Bowers, who put three men on Ohio’s death row in 28 years as a prosecutor, said groups such as Drizin’s are needed to provide balance in the system. “We’ve always have got to have two sides to an issue. Issues have got to be debated and have to run their course,” Bowers said. But on the other hand, Bowers said when groups and lawyers play the stall game it’s not an issue of exploring innocence but rather obstructing justice. “Mr. Spirko has had a fair trial and it has been reviewed how many times by how many courts? Certainly his acts are of such an egregious nature that he deserves to die,” Bowers said. But Drizin does not believe Spirko killed Mottinger. He said Elgin is too remote of a location to stumble on and the post office would have been a poor target for a robbery, which was one of the motives in the case. “My review of the file suggested very strongly whoever was involved in the crime had some connection to Elgin, Ohio, and kidnapped Mrs. Mottinger because they had a fear she could identify them down the road,” he said. The latest claim that postponed Tuesday’s scheduled execution until Jan. 19 is a request for DNA testing. Spirko’s attorneys want to test a painter’s tarp that was wrapped around Mottinger’s remains when her body was found in Findlay six weeks after her abduction. Spirko’s attorneys have suggested the tarp may have belonged to another man who ran a painting business. That man is currently in a Louisiana prison and a former employee has come forward to suggest his former boss was the killer. Ohio Attorney General Jim Petro stepped in asking the governor for a 60-day reprieve while his office examines the tarp and other articles found with the body to see if there is any biological evidence to submit for DNA testing. Drizin commends Petro for his willingness to examine various avenues and said the DNA could be linked to other people to investigate. On the other hand, it could cement the case against Spirko if his DNA is found with the tarp. “The beauty of DNA is it doesn’t play favorites,” he said. There’s also the chance there will be no biological matter available for testing, but any that provides a match to someone other than Spirko provides a starting point, he said. Drizin also said if someone else’s DNA is found, the state will have a burden to explain how it got on a tarp used in the murder. Streib said DNA evidence doesn’t necessarily point to a killer unless it was a rape-murder case where the killer left behind DNA during the rape such as in semen. “All it does is say at some point in time that person touched that object,” Streib said. Streib is not exactly sure why the Spirko case has gained so much attention. He surmises it’s because of Spirko’s claim of innocent coupled with the lack of “slam-dunk evidence,” he said. Additionally, the public as a whole, which is usually strongly for the death penalty, listens more to claims of innocence than other challenges, he said.
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