Why worry about a wrong execution?

In 21 days Ohio might execute the wrong man.

Ohio Attorney General Jim Petro wants John Spirko dead, ASAP.

Someone kidnapped postmaster Betty Jane Mottinger on Aug. 9, 1982, in rural Elgin, Ohio, stabbed her more than a dozen times, wrapped her in a cloth and dumped her body in a field.

There's a good chance it wasn't Spirko. No physical evidence links him to the crime.

The facts might not have been strong enough to convince the Ohio Parole Board, so Petro's senior deputy Tim Prichard threw in a few false statements.

He said that a description of the victim's missing purse had to have come from Spirko because investigators didn't know what it looked like. But his own documents show that they did know.

Prichard told the board that Spirko knew details about the cloth that were not in the newspaper. Wrong. The Toledo Blade had reported them.

Prichard told the board that investigator Paul Hartman could not have fed Spirko details about the victim's clothing because another inspector witnessed the interview. Also untrue. Spirko and Hartman were alone.

It worked. The board has voted, 6-3, to recommend that the governor deny clemency.

Prichard later told a reporter that if his presentation was wrong, it was because he was unaware of those facts.

Unaware of the facts?

Did Petro forget to tell him that a man's life was on the line?

But then again, facts, fiction, what's the difference? A jury was fed both at the trial. Why change strategies now?

The state presented a case against Spirko that it knew to be false. Prosecutors had strong evidence that Spirko's friend was nowhere near the crime scene, yet they told the jury that Spirko and the friend committed the crime together.

Postal inspector Hartman said Spirko admitted killing the woman, but oddly enough, Hartman never wrote that in his notes, never taped the statements and never produced a signed confession -- even though he conducted at least a dozen interviews with Spirko.

Hartman collected most of the evidence and steered conversations to Spirko's friend and former cellmate, Delaney Gibson. Hartman helped win a conviction based on a story that Spirko and Gibson killed the woman.

But the prosecutors had photos and receipts showing that Gibson was in North Carolina at the time. Instead of sharing that with the defense, they used a phony link to Gibson to convict Spirko.

Years later, Hartman told three people that he knew before the trial started that Gibson had nothing to do with the crime. The prosecutors knew that, too. Which explains why they never tried Gibson for murder.

The clemency report says that Ohio Chief Justice Thomas Moyer and Justice Paul Pfeifer support a stay of execution. So do three retired federal judges, including William Sessions, who is also a former FBI director.

U.S. District Judge James Carr of Toledo wants the execution delayed to review the case.

The clemency report states that "countless numbers of letters and phone calls were received by the Parole Board as to why the death sentence should not be carried out."

Keep it up.

Write Governor Bob Taft, 30th Floor, 77 South High St., Columbus, Ohio 43215-6117.
Log on to http://www.governor.ohio.gov and contact him at the top of the page.
Call him at 614-466-3555. Fax him at 614-466-9354.

A man's life is at stake.

To reach this Plain Dealer columnist:

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