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Dayton Daily News
COMMENTARY Mary McCarty: Tests Can Unshroud The Truth
By Mary McCarty November 6, 2005 I'll never forget the vision of John Spirko's eyes peering through the food slot in his Death Row cell block. The year was 1995, and Ohio hadn't executed an inmate in 32 years when colleague Tom Beyerlein and I traveled to Mansfield to write a series on Death Row. Spirko wasn't on the list of inmates we were scheduled to interview, but he called out to us. His eyes darted around the narrow slit as swiftly and nervously as a hummingbird's. Wary. Piercing. Accusing. I couldn't help feeling skeptical when Spirko, convicted of the 1982 slaying of Elgin postmaster Betty Jane Mottinger, professed his innocence. I'd heard such a thing before. "Like many of his Death Row neighbors, Spirko says he didn't do it," we wrote of our encounter. But Spirko now appears to have a powerful and troubling case. At the very least, it merits a closer look. "This case has the weakest evidence of any death penalty case I've ever worked on," said Steven Drizin, legal director for the Center on Wrongful Convictions at the Northwestern University School of Law. The center arranged for a polygraph test to be administered to John Willier, who has implicated his former boss, Dale Dingus of Findlay, in Mottinger's murder. Willier identified the blood-drenched murder shroud as a drop cloth belonging to Dingus, who is now serving a prison sentence for rape. Willier passed his lie detector test, prompting Spirko defense attorney Thomas Hill to ask prosecutors to perform DNA and other tests on the shroud for the first time. At Spirko's second clemency hearing Oct. 12, Ohio Parole Board member Slayman N. Bedra said, "We can all agree there was likely more than one offender, and we owe it to Mrs. Mottinger and her family to continue the pursuit of justice." Yet the parole board voted for a second time against the clemency recommendation, 6 to 3, and Ohio assistant attorney general Charles Wille seemed curiously uninterested in DNA evidence. He piled on reason after reason the shroud shouldn't be tested: "The blood on the shroud was so congealed it couldn't be worked with. In all probability, it was Mrs. Mottinger's blood. There's no real basis for DNA evidence." Countered Drizin, "Mr. Wille may be right, but he can't possibly know that. If you believe Mr. Spirko is guilty he has as much to lose from this DNA testing as he has to gain. The beauty of DNA evidence is that it doesn't play favorites." Kim Norris, spokeswoman for Ohio Attorney General Jim Petro, said Friday that Petro's office is considering a defense request that the state test the tarp. The state should proceed with the DNA testing. "Whether or not you believe in the death penalty, this is not the case for it," Drizin said. "There is simply way too much doubt, and too many investigative avenues have not been explored. You can't write off Spirko and say if he's innocent his execution is just the cost of doing business on Death Row." And if we do? Then I'm not the only person who should be haunted by John Spirko's accusing eyes.
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