Gov. Ted Strickland Granted Clemency to Jeff Hill

Ohio governor. Ted Strickland granted clemency to Jeff Hill this afternoon. The press release and statement by the Governor's Office is posted below.

Statement Regarding Clemency Application of Jeffrey D. Hill

Columbus , Ohio – Governor Ted Strickland today issued the following statement regarding the pending clemency application of Jeffrey D. Hill:

“Jeffrey Hill was convicted, by a jury, of the aggravated murder of Emma Hill, his mother. He is scheduled to be executed on March 3, 2009.

On February 6, 2009, the Ohio Parole Board unanimously recommended that Mr. Hill be granted a commutation of his death sentence to a sentence of from 25 years to life. The Parole Board cited five basic reasons for its recommendation: the views of the victim’s family, the lack of adequate representation by counsel at Mr. Hill’s sentencing, the remorse demonstrated by Mr. Hill regarding his actions, the lack of proportionality of the sentence of death in this case when compared with similar murder cases, and the expressed views of two justices of the Ohio Supreme Court which reviewed this case on appeal.

In making my determination regarding Mr. Hill’s clemency application, my staff and I have reviewed the record of the proceedings and the evidence presented in Mr. Hill’s case, the judicial decisions regarding Mr. Hill’s conviction, the Application for Executive Clemency filed by Mr. Hill’s attorney and arguments presented for and against the clemency request, and other materials provided by attorneys. We have also reviewed letters and petitions received in the Governor’s office regarding this matter and supplemental briefings provided by the Ohio Public Defender’s office. Finally, we reviewed the Ohio Parole Board’s report and recommendation.

Based on this review, I concur with the rationale and recommendation of the Ohio Parole Board and have, therefore, decided to commute Mr. Hill’s sentence to a term of from 25 years to life.”

A copy of the warrant of commutation of sentence is included below:

Warrant of Commutation of Sentence

1. Jeffrey D. Hill #A261-876 was convicted of the crime of Aggravated Murder with a Death Penalty Specification and sentenced by the Hamilton County Common Pleas Court to death.
   

2. Mr. Hill is currently incarcerated in the custody of the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction and is scheduled to be executed on March 3, 2009.
   

3. After the review of extensive material associated with this case, I concur with the unanimous rationale and recommendation of the Ohio Parole Board.
   

4. Accordingly, I direct that the sentence of death of Jeffrey D. Hill be commuted to a term of from 25 years to life.
   

5. I signed this Warrant of Commutation on February 12, 2009, in Columbus, Ohio.
   

____________________________

Ted Strickland, Governor

Filed the 13^th day of February, 2009 with the Hamilton County Common Pleas Clerk of Court by Jose A. Torres.

Paul House will be released today

This is the great news from Tennessee. According to the Tennessean, Paul House will be released today. TCASK will probably have some more updates soon.

Paul Gregory House will celebrate the Fourth of July at home this Friday thanks to an anonymous donor who sent his mother the $10,000 bail needed for his release from state custody.

House, who has multiple sclerosis and uses a wheelchair, is set for release today at 9:30 a.m. from the Lois M. DeBerry Special Needs Facility in Nashville.

"I was in tears because I couldn't find an appraiser for a property bond," said his mother, Joyce House. "Then I got an anonymous caller who said they were going to put up the money. There are angels out there. One day I hope to meet them."

House, 46, was on death row for 22 years after being convicted in 1986 of murdering Carolyn Muncey in East Tennessee. The U.S. Supreme Court concluded in 2006 that a jury, based upon DNA evidence that emerged years after his trial, could find reasonable doubt in the case. House has maintained his innocence.

U.S. District Court Judge Harry Mattice Jr. ordered the state to release House or retry him within 180 days, and an appeals court upheld Mattice's decision.

Prosecutors said they would retry House, and a state court judge in Union County set a $500,000 bond. Another judge reduced the bond to $100,000. At least 10 percent of that amount was required for House's release.

House's mother planned to use her Crossville home for a property bond to get her son released from jail while awaiting his second trial in October.

Under the bail conditions set by a judge, House can only leave his mother's home for medical appointments and court appearances. He will have a 24-hour electronic monitoring system and has to register as a sex offender. No firearms are allowed in the house.

Groups declare victory

The state does not plan to seek the death penalty during the second trial, and anti-death penalty organizations already have declared victory.

"We are so grateful to all the Tennesseans and people all over the country who have supported our work to free Paul House," said Stacy Rector, executive director of the Tennessee Coalition to Abolish State Killing.

Contact Chris Echegaray at 664-2144 or cechegaray@tennessean.com.

John G Spirko's death sentence commuted to LWOP

Today Tennessee Gov. Ted Strickland commuted death sentence of John G. Spirko to LWOP, short of the clemency request filed by his attorneys. TCASK will probably have some more updates soon. In a statement, the governor said,

John Spirko was convicted, by a jury, of a heinous murder. At times, when he wasn't denying having committed the murder, he appears to have admitted doing so. Ohio and federal trial, appellate and supreme courts reviewed his conviction and upheld it. Alibi claims and claims regarding evidentiary weaknesses, including more recently developed theories and interpretations of evidence, were considered by those courts and rejected. In addition, Governor Taft and I granted Mr. Spirko, collectively, seven reprieves to allow for the analysis of DNA related to the case. Once completed, these DNA tests neither exonerated Mr. Spirko nor implicated him or anyone else.

The Ohio Parole Board twice unanimously recommended against clemency for Mr. Spirko. Most recently, in 2005, six members of the Board recommended against clemency and three recommended that Mr. Spirko be allowed time to exhaust newly developed legal theories in the courts. Mr. Spirko was ultimately allowed that opportunity and his claims were rejected. Mr. Spirko's claims that his own lies led to his conviction for an offense that he did not commit are unpersuasive in the face of the judicial scrutiny this case has received. Nonetheless, I have concluded that 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 and revelations about the case over the past 20 years, makes the imposition of the death penalty inappropriate in this case.

In making this determination, my staff and I conducted a thorough review of the judicial decisions associated with this matter, the Adult Parole Authority's reports and recommendations, letters received in the Office of the Governor and by the parole board, the arguments and exhibits presented at the Parole Board hearing, the arguments presented by Mr. Spirko's counsel in favor of clemency, recordings of various interviews, relevant photographs, newspaper analyses of this matter and Mr. Spirko's institutional mental health records.

Based on this review, I have decided to commute Mr. Spirko's sentence to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.

Also here is the response from Spirko's attorney's,

John Spirko is an innocent man who has spent 25 very long and hard years in prison -- 23 on death row -- for a crime he did not commit. There can be no joy in the commutation of an innocent man's sentence to life without parole. The positive thing about Governor Strickland's commutation is that the State will now not execute an innocent man and that we can, and will, continue to fight for Mr. Spirko's complete exoneration and release.

We had told Governor Strickland that Mr. Spirko was prepared to waive all his constitutional rights to allow the Van Wert County Prosecutor to again try him and seek the death penalty in a fair and honest trial -- not the trial he got in 1984, filled as it was with false evidence and a false theory of the case. All Mr. Spirko has ever asked for was to be judged fairly and honestly. We all now know that there is absolutely not one shred of evidence -- physical, forensic or otherwise -- linking Mr. Spirko to this crime. The recent DNA and fingerprint results for which we waited more than two years confirm that Mr. Spirko was not present at the crime scenes. Objectively corroborated evidence confirms that Mr. Spirko was meeting in Toledo with his parole officer at the very time this crime was being committed in Elgin, 100 miles away.

We will continue to urge Governor Strickland and Attorney General Dann to review Mr. Spirko's claims of actual innocence so that justice will be served by Mr. Spirko's release from prison and by finally prosecuting those actually responsible for Mrs. Mottinger's murder.

Tom Hill
Alvin Dunn