Ohio Parole Board rejects Spirko clemency bid -- Recommends Taft uphold death penalty

By the same 6-3 margin in an August recommendation to Gov. Bob Taft, the board majority said Spirko's claims about a flawed investigation and trial were not persuasive and that the inmate's own words were enough to convict him in 1984.

"The majority is not convinced that any manifest injustice occurred in Mr.
Spirko's case," the 6 wrote.

In a dissent, three board members said too much doubt has been raised
about Spirko's guilt to execute him. They recommended that Taft commute his sentence to life in prison without parole.

Execution requires "the most stringent test of due process," they wrote.
"We are left to wonder if that threshold has been met in Spirko's case."

Unless Taft rejects the board's recommendation, which he has never done in a death penalty case, Spirko is scheduled to die Nov. 15 for the murder of Elgin, Ohio, postmaster Betty Jane Mottinger.

Spirko still has a review pending before a federal judge, who has agreed
to examine documents that could cast further doubt on the credibility of
retired postal inspector Paul Hartman, the investigator most responsible
for putting Spirko on death row.

No physical evidence ever connected Spirko to Elgin or Mottinger. But
prosecutors said he committed the murder with his best friend, Delaney
Gibson, and argued that Gibson was seen in Elgin the day of the crime.

The dissenters said they doubted that theory, and they noted that evidence putting Gibson 600 miles away from Elgin the evening before the murder was not given to the defense. The fact that Gibson was never prosecuted added to their doubts.

The 6 didn't agree that the Gibson evidence was intentionally withheld,
saying Spirko's trial lawyers simply made a "strategic decision" not to
pursue it.

They said that Spirko knew crime details that had not been made public and that they were not convinced that Hartman might have supplied them.

The 6 deferred to the 1984 jury's assessment of Spirko's alibi and certain
other evidence, saying that "the jury was in the best position to assess
credibility regarding this testimony."

(source: Cleveland Plain Dealer)