This thread discusses the Content article: Strickland "spares" John
Governor saves Spirko from execution
Posted by Bob Paynter January 09, 2008 15:37PM
Categories: Breaking News, Crime, Impact
John Spirko will not be executed for the 1982 murder of Betty Jane Mottinger. But he'll never get out of prison, either.
Citing the lack of physical evidence in the 1982 murder and what he described as "slim residual doubt" about Spirko's guilt, Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland said today that executing the death-row inmate would be "inappropriate." Instead, Strickland commuted Spirko's sentence to life in prison without parole.
Spirko attorney Tom Hill said today that Spirko was relieved at the governor's decision to spare him from lethal injection. But Hill, who as Spirko's lawyer has described the evidence of Spirko's actual innocence as overwhelming, expressed disappointment that Strickland did not pardon his client outright, or commute his sentence to time already
served and release him.
In his statement, Strickland noted that state and federal courts had reviewed Spirko's case numerous times since 1984, when he was convicted by a Van Wert County jury and sentenced to death. Strickland said he found Spirko's claims of innocence as "unpersuasive in the face of the judicial scrutiny" his conviction has received.
Van Wert County prosecutor Charles Kennedy, who was not in office in 1984 but has been a strong proponent of Spirko's execution, could not be reached for comment today.
Related:
• Collected Plain Dealer stories at www.cleveland.com/spirko
• Plain Dealer today: John Spirko's future up to Gov. Ted Strickland (Regina Brett)
• Gov. Strickland's statement
Oh, Great Spirit, grant that I may not criticize my neighbor until I have walked a mile in his moccasins." - Old Indian Prayer My dad told me!! |
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