DNA Testing Finds No Connection to Ohio Death Row Inmate - CLEMENCY GRANTED

January 10, 2008

Gov. Ted Strickland of Ohio has granted clemency to John Spirko, reducing his death sentence to a sentence of life without possibility of parole. The governor cited "the lack of physical evidence linking him to the murder, as well as the slim residual doubt about his responsibility for the murder that arises from careful scrutiny of the case record" in his statement granting the commutation on Jan. 9. (Warrant of Commutation, Governor of Ohio, January 9, 2008). For a fuller description of the case, see below.

The Attorney General of Ohio had disclosed that two years of state-of-the-art DNA testing revealed no links connecting John Spirko, Jr., 61, to the 1982 kidnapping and murder of Betty Jane Mottinger, an Ohio postmaster. Spirko’s defense attorneys urged Ohio Governor Ted Strickland to grant their client an executive pardon for the murder on the basis of Spirko's innocence.

Spirko has persistently maintained his innocence, stating that, on the day of the crime, he never left the Toledo area to travel 100 miles to Elgin, Ohio, where the murder took place. His sister corroborated his story.

Attorneys for the state of Ohio believed at first that Spirko's former cellmate, Delaney Gibson, had been an accomplice to the crime. Spirko had implicated Gibson when he fabricated a story for investigators, a story that ultimately led to his conviction. Gibson was never prosecuted, and Spirko has since admitted he made the story up in order to get a deal for an unrelated crime.

One of Spirko’s attorneys, Alvin Dunn, told The Toledo Blade, “[These DNA findings are] consistent with what he has maintained all along, that he had nothing to do with this crime. We believe that if anybody takes a careful look at this case he would find that John Spirko was wrongly convicted….The governor is in a position to do the right thing in the issue of justice and to protect the legitimacy of the criminal justice system.”
(“DNA test doesn't tie Spirko to crime scene,” by Jim Provance, The Toledo Blade, January 4, 2008).

Source: Death Penalty Information Center

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