This thread discusses the Content article: Strickland "spares" John
Governor commutes death sentence; killer prepares for new prison
By ANDREW WELSH-HUGGINS
Associated Press Writer
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — A convicted killer whose death sentence was commuted to life in prison by Gov. Ted Strickland prepared to leave death row as early as Thursday.
John Spirko, 61, who maintains he didn’t kill postmistress Betty Jane Mottinger in 1982, will be processed by prison officials and then sent to another prison, said Andrea Carson, spokeswoman for the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction.
Under Strickland’s commutation order, Spirko will not be eligible for parole.
Strickland based his decision Wednesday on the lack of physical evidence linking Spirko to the 26-year-old murder and “the slim residual doubt” about Spirko’s responsibility for the slaying based on a careful study of the case.
Those factors make “the imposition of the death penalty inappropriate in this case,” Strickland said.
Spirko had received seven reprieves while the Ohio Parole Board reconsidered his case and DNA testing was conducted on material found near Mottinger’s body.
The attorney general’s office said last week it had concluded that no DNA evidence links Spirko to Mottinger’s death.
Mottinger was abducted from a post office she ran in Elgin in northwest Ohio and repeatedly stabbed, then wrapped in a tarp and dumped in a field. Her body was found three weeks later.
Strickland, a Democrat, is a death penalty supporter but has said he is conscious of the numerous examples of exoneration through DNA testing around the country.
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Although Strickland spared Spirko, he rejected several alternatives suggested by Spirko’s attorneys that would have freed their client.
Attorneys had asked for a full pardon, a conditional pardon or a commutation to time served, all of which would have allowed Spirko to be released.
Strickland said state and federal courts reviewed and upheld Spirko’s conviction and the Ohio Parole Board twice rejected his petition for clemency.
A message seeking comment was left with Mottinger’s daughter.
Spirko’s attorneys said they were disappointed that Strickland did not free Spirko.
“There can be no joy in the commutation of an innocent man’s sentence to life without parole,” Washington, D.C.-based lawyers Tom Hill and Alvin Dunn said in a statement.
Spirko is the second death row inmate in a week to avoid execution after a long legal struggle. On Monday, U.S.-British citizen Ken Richey, 43, entered a plea deal in a northwest Ohio court that allowed him to accept a sentence of time already served and leave the United States. The agreement came after an appeals court overturned Richey’s 1987 death sentence last year.
Spirko also is the second death row inmate whose sentence was commuted to life in prison under the state’s new death penalty law. In 2003, then-Gov. Bob Taft commuted the sentence of Jerome Campbell of Cincinnati because of concerns about evidence presented at Campbell’s trial.
Former Postal Inspector Paul Hartman, who interviewed Spirko 16 times during the investigation, said he remains convinced Spirko killed Mottinger and called the governor’s decision an acceptable resolution.
The results of the Spirko and Richey cases likely will not signal any shift away from support for the death penalty in Ohio, said Ohio State University law professor Doug Berman.
Both cases were complicated, with defendants whose innocence claims were not clear cut, said Berman, a death penalty expert.
Last year, Strickland denied clemency requests by three inmates, two of whom were executed. A third, Kenneth Biros, had his execution delayed by the U.S. Supreme Court to allow him to pursue a lawsuit challenging lethal injection as unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment.
Spirko’s lengthy list of crimes dates back to when he was 10 years old and stole cigarettes and money from a teacher’s desk at school.
He was involved in a number of thefts, according to court records, and was in and out of jail until 1969 when he was charged with killing a 72-year-old woman during a robbery in Covington, Ky.
Spirko was spared the death penalty then by the vote of just one juror and served 12 years in prison. He was paroled two weeks before Mottinger’s disappearance.
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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