Spirko execution delay urged

"It's another significant and dramatic piece of evidence which shows authorities are heading down the path of executing the wrong man while the real party goes not only unprosecuted, but uninvestigated," defense attorney Thomas Hill said Monday.

Gov. Bob Taft is considering whether to grant clemency for Spirko.

Hill of Washington, D.C., asked the Ohio Parole Board to reverse its two previous 6-3 votes against a clemency recommendation in light of John Willier's polygraph test. And Hill asked prosecutors to perform DNA and other modern forensic tests on a paint-spattered theater curtain that was used to wrap Mottinger's body.

Spokeswomen for Ohio Attorney General Jim Petro and the parole board said the requests are being reviewed.

In his polygraph exam, Willier identified the shroud as a painter's tarp used by his former boss, Dale Dingus of Findlay, who was painting a home nearby when the rural Van Wert County postmaster was abducted and killed.

Dingus and Willier have no apparent connection with Spirko.

In a letter to The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer, Dingus, now serving prison time in Louisiana for rape, denied involvement in Mottinger's killing.

Willier first implicated Dingus in a 1997 interview with Wyandot County prosecutor's investigator Bill Latham.

Latham testified for Spirko at his two clemency hearings,

saying U.S. postal inspectors and the FBI failed to investigate Willier's claims in 1997 after Latham brought them to their attention. Latham expressed concern that Spirko was wrongfully convicted.

A federal judge, however, has refused to reopen Spirko's case based on the allegations about Dingus.

After federal authorities declined to examine whether Willier was telling the truth, the Center on Wrongful Convictions at the Northwestern University law school in Chicago arranged to have him polygraphed in Tennessee last week by Robert P. Campbell, a retired FBI special agent.

Willier showed no signs of deception, Campbell said, when questioned about his statement that he recognized the murder shroud as Dingus' drop cloth and that Dingus had threatened him in the 1980s, saying "you don't know anything about this case" while pointing a rifle at his head. Willier also said then-U.S. Postal Inspector Paul Hartman told him not to talk to Spirko's defense attorneys at the time of his trial.

The Center on Wrongful Convictions is to present the developments at the Ohio State University law school at 1 p.m. Wednesday in a lecture, Is Ohio about to execute the wrong man?

Steven Drizin, the center's legal director, said the tarp "would be the centerpiece of the investigation" if the murder happened today, and it must be tested for DNA before Spirko is put to death. If any DNA connected with Dingus or his crew is found on the tarp, Drizin said, "he (Dingus) becomes Suspect No. 1."

Contact Tom Beyerlein at (937) 225-2264.

www.johnspirko.com