Taft to delay Spirko execution

Spirko's case has been dogged by questions about the quality of both the evidence  Spirko claims he had nothing to do with the crime. Pe tro's office maintains Spirko was justly convicted.

While the Ohio Parole Board has twice voted to recommend that Taft deny clemency, three dissenting members said there's too much doubt to execute Spirko.

Mottinger was kidnapped from her Elgin, Ohio, post office in August 1982. Her body, stabbed more than a dozen times and wrapped in a paint-splattered shroud, was found six weeks later in a soybean field.

Spirko's lawyers renewed their call for DNA testing last month after a former painter, who implicated his boss years ago in the crime, passed a polygraph test.

Former painter John Willier has said he recognized the shroud as a dropcloth he and his boss, Dale Dingus, used while painting a house in Findlay the summer Mottinger was killed. Spirko's lawyers also want the paint from the cloth tested against the paint on the Findlay house.

Dingus, now in a Louisiana prison for rape, has denied any involvement in the slaying.

Petro told Spirko's lawyers in a letter that he is a proponent of DNA technology.

Given the facts in the Spirko case, Petro said, he doesn't believe the testing will prove guilt or innocence, but wants to make test results available to Taft and others.

Petro's skepticism about the results was echoed Monday by Edward Blake, a forensic scientist and national expert on DNA testing. In this case, Blake said, DNA testing sounds like "nothing more than a fishing expedition that has a very low chance of success."

He said it's possible to extract DNA from biological samples 23 years after a crime. The question is whether those samples would be relevant. The key piece of physical evidence in this case - the shroud, or painting tarp - could contain biological material from someone completely unconnected to the crime, Blake said.

But Spirko's lawyer, Alvin Dunn, said testing the shroud could yield important results.

"If this reveals that it's got DNA evidence of persons who have no connection to John Spirko, we believe it really does indicate that John Spirko had nothing to do with this crime," he said.

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