[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, N.H., GA., ALA., LA., OHIO

[Rick Halperin]

April 11




TEXAS:

Judge denies request for mistrial in Delacruz capital murder case; sentencing 
continues



Sentencing in the case of Isidro Delacruz picked back up Monday, with the judge 
dismissing requests by the defense to declare a mistrial or grant a continuance 
because of new evidence.

Delacruz, 27, was convicted of capital murder last month in the slaying of 
5-year-old Naiya Villegas, the daughter of his ex-girlfriend. The child died 
after her throat was slit at her mother's home in the 2700 block of Houston 
Street on Sept. 2, 2014.

119th District Judge Ben Woodward had halted trial last Wednesday after an 
administrator with the San Angelo Independent School District - who was 
supposed to testify last Tuesday about Delacruz's academic performance - 
presented prosecutors with 30 new pages of school records when he arrived at 
the courthouse.

Prosecutors had requested and received 205 pages of school files relating to 
Delacruz from SAISD in September 2014. The files included Delacruz's class 
schedules, state assessment tests, grade reports, and attendance, disciplinary 
and health records.

Asked to find any other SAISD records regarding Delacruz, the administrator 
gave prosecutors 527 total pages Tuesday evening.

Prosecutors said some of the originally received files and the 30 additional 
pages were contained in the 527 pages.

Court-appointed attorneys Robert R. Cowie and William P.H. Boyles, of the 
Regional Public Defender, filed motions the next day for a mistrial and a sixth 
continuance based on the receipt of the additional school files.

They argued the untimely production of the records violated Delacruz's rights 
and hindered their ability to provide effective counsel to their client.

51st District Attorney Allison Palmer argued a mistrial would be an extreme 
remedy and wasn't appropriate. She argued there were no trial errors and 
granting a mistrial would be a great injustice.

Palmer also argued against the 6th continuance request, saying the defense had 
more than enough time to review and prepare for trial, considering the number 
of trial delays in Delacruz's case.

"Granting a delay of several days' time for the defense to employ the records 
in whatever way they see fit is a less drastic alternative that cures any 
issue," Palmer said.

Law enforcement personnel testified Monday about Delacruz's criminal record and 
behavior problems at the Tom Green County Jail.

An officer with the San Angelo Police Department told jurors Delacruz has 
numerous arrests on drug charges as well as criminal mischief and evading 
arrest.

An official with the county's probation office said Delacruz had at least five 
probation officers in charge of him. She said he broke probation rules numerous 
times by drinking alcohol and failing to pay $3,000 in fees and restitution, 
for example.

Deputies with the Tom Green County Jail then told jurors Delacruz has had 
behavior problems since his arrest on day of Naiya's death.

Deputies found a razor blade, which was taken from a shaving blade, in 
Delacruz's cell, for instance. Delacruz also made numerous calls to his 
ex-girlfriend shortly after he was arrested. Jail officers blocked her number 
after she reported it to a staff member.

Jailhouse phone calls between Delacruz and an acquaintance showed he had driven 
drunk on one occasion as well.

Delacruz faces the death penalty or life in prison.

(source: gosanangelo.com)






**************************

CNN documentary explores Rodney Reed's death penalty case



CNN's "Death Row Stories" focused on Bastrop County in a recent episode that 
fleshed out the complex 1996 slaying of Stacey Stites and the decadeslong 
murder trial of Rodney Reed.

Reed was sentenced to death in the 1996 strangulation death of Stacey Stites.

The true-crime documentary series, now in its third season, aired an hourlong 
special on the confounding case April 1 in an episode titled "Love Kills." The 
episode pulls together 13 interviews from people who have been heavily immersed 
in the case over the years, including members of Stites' and Reed's family, 
special prosecutor Lisa Tanner and Curtis Davis, a Bastrop County deputy and 
friend to Stites' then-fiance Jimmy Fennell, who was an early suspect in the 
case.

During Reed's 1998 trial, prosecutors presented medical testimony indicating 
that Stites had been strangled shortly after 3 a.m. as she drove from the 
Giddings apartment she shared with Fennell to her job at a Bastrop grocery 
store. Reed's semen was presented as evidence that he had raped and killed 
Stites, leaving her body alongside a rural road, miles from where her pickup 
was found at Bastrop High School.

Reed's defense attorneys have argued Reed and Stites were involved in a 
consensual sexual relationship.

But during a hearing in Bastrop in October, Reed's lawyers presented testimony 
from a noted forensic pathologist, Dr. Michael Baden, who concluded that crime 
scene photos and videotape illustrate "fixed lividity" in Stites' body that 
shows that the body had lain face down for at least 5 hours before her body was 
left on a rural roadside. That time frame, defense attorneys say, would point 
to Fennell as the killer.

Visiting Judge Doug Shaver, who oversaw the hearing, declined to recommend a 
new trial for Reed, saying he found the new evidence unpersuasive.

Between the 13 people interviewed by CNN 20 years after the trial, a very stark 
line was drawn between those who believe prosecutors theory that concluded 
Reed's guilt, and those who believed the defense attorneys who argued Fennell 
was at guilt.

David Fisher, a Bastrop County resident who believes in Reed's innocence, has 
worked as a consultant on the case since 2001 and since then has become a 
self-described expert on medical examinations of crime scene evidence.

Fisher said he was one of the first who said Stites' body had been tampered 
with, as evinced by the fixed lividity illustrated in crime scene photos and 
videos. That evidence was a central focus in last week's show.

"They could have done a whole special on the tampering of the evidence," Fisher 
said. "But that's not the contract this production team had - it's a drama 
series."

Fisher said the show was nonbiased but claims prosecutors and law enforcement - 
who were featured prominently throughout the documentary - were being 
misleading and lied to producers.

Tanner, the prosecutor in the case, did not return requests for comment.

Davis, on the other hand, was a close friend of Fennell and a Bastrop County 
jailer at the time of Stites' murder. As a central figure in the case, he has 
been consistently adamant over Reed's guilt.

While he had not seen CNN's latest episode, he's no stranger to the media's 
treatment of the facts of the case. He's been featured in several true-crime 
shows that analyze Stites' murder over the years, he said.

"They edit it and say what they want to say. So, what they want me to have said 
is going to be in there, and what they didn't want me to say isn't going to be 
in there," Davis said.

"That's the reason I don't watch cop shows," he said. "Because anything that's 
got a camera can be edited. It makes it very hard to trust things like that."

The Court of Criminal Appeals has not yet acted on Reed's appeal months after 
Shaver's recommendation against a new trial. In a last-ditch effort to avoid 
execution, Reed requested in February that the U.S. Supreme Court allow DNA 
testing on crime scene evidence that his defense lawyers argue could establish 
his innocence.

Reed's Supreme Court appeal is separate from the appeal that is pending before 
the Court of Criminal Appeals.

Last month, Fennell, who was serving a 10-year sentence for the kidnapping and 
sexual assault of a woman in his custody as a Georgetown police officer in 
2007, was released from prison 6 months early.

(source: Austin American-Statesman)

***********************

Texas Border Patrol agent charged in deaths of woman, 1-year-old



A supervisor for the U.S. Border Patrol killed a woman with whom he was 
romantically involved and her 1-year-old child before calling 911 claiming to 
have discovered the bodies near a park along the border with Mexico, Texas 
authorities said Tuesday.

Ronald Anthony Burgos Aviles, 28, was being held without bond in the Webb 
County jail on 2 counts of capital murder.

Joe Baeza, police spokesman in the border city of Laredo, said Burgos Aviles 
was identified as a person of interest within an hour of the 911 call Monday, 
but Baeza declined to elaborate.

He said Grizelda Hernandez, 27, and her son, Dominick Alexander Hernandez, 
likely were killed Monday near the park, which is adjacent to the Rio Grande 
and just south of the World Trade Bridge that carries traffic between the U.S. 
and Mexico.

Burgos Aviles and the woman were in a romantic relationship, Baeza said. The 
investigation will determine if Dominick was Burgos Aviles' child.

"This isn't over," Baeza said. "This investigation is just barely getting 
started."

Authorities declined to provide the manner of death for the 2. Online jail 
records do not indicate an attorney for Burgos Aviles to answer the 
allegations.

Burgos Aviles was a 9-year veteran of the Border Patrol, Baeza said, and had 
been promoted last year.

Jason Owens, Border Patrol chief for the agency's Laredo sector, said at a news 
conference Tuesday that the deaths represent a "horrific tragedy."

"The actions of this individual, if true, are both inexcusable and 
reprehensible," Owens said. "No one is more sickened than we are at the thought 
of someone wearing this uniform committing such a heinous act."

Baeza said investigators are working to learn more about Burgos Aviles' 
relationship with Hernandez and many other aspects of the case, such as whether 
the suspect acted alone or had help.

Webb County District Attorney Isidro Alaniz said it's too early to determine if 
prosecutors will seek the death penalty, adding that the case "is being given 
extreme priority."

(source: wgntv.com)

*****************************

Texas' move to hasten death penalty would come at high cost



The state of Texas recently renewed its request with Attorney General Jeff 
Sessions to opt in for fast-tracked death penalty cases. While this would save 
the state time and money and ensure expedited executions, a Department of 
Justice approval would jeopardize the lives of innocent people on death row in 
a state whose justice system already has numerous flaws.

Both Arizona and Texas are hoping to qualify under Chapter 154 of U.S. Title 
28, which allows for unique habeas corpus - or illegal imprisonment - 
procedures in state cases involving the death penalty. These special procedures 
include first limiting the timing of federal petitions, fast-tracking them 
through federal courts. The 2nd is restricting the scope of federal reviews of 
these criminal cases, limiting appeals options for defendants. So far, no state 
has qualified for Chapter 154 certification, but if granted, this certification 
would be a calamity.

A mix of lawyers, former officials and groups such as the American Civil 
Liberties Union and American Bar Association have sounded the alarm on Texas' 
application for certification. Allen Place, a lawyer and official of the Texas 
Criminal Defense Lawyers Association, stated in an email that "there is no 
other type of legal action that should bear more scrutiny than a death penalty 
case and any procedural attempt to 'speed' up the process is not reasoned or 
sound."

Furthermore, Place said that prisoners who got off death row - those who have 
been wrongfully convicted or who have had their sentences commuted - "would 
have been executed prematurely under these ideas." Allen said that this, 
coupled with the fact that the number of Texas death penalty verdicts are 
falling, makes the Office of the Attorney General's attempt to expedite appeals 
unreasonable.

A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found 
that the rate of wrongful death penalty convictions in the United States is at 
least 4.1 %. Considering Texas has 229 inmates on death row, this means nine or 
more could have been unjustly sentenced under the study's findings.

Under Texas' plan to expedite post-conviction proceedings, individuals facing 
wrongful convictions would likely be executed before they've had a chance to go 
through the exoneration process. Anthony Graves, who was saved by a federal 
court after Texas courts rejected his pleas, spent 12 years on death row before 
having his conviction overturned. He said to The Texas Tribune that "if it 
(were) up to the state itself, I would have been executed." We would perpetuate 
an unforgivable injustice if Texas goes down this dark, cost-saving road.

Texas' petition also assumes that an exemplary public defense system exists for 
defendants, which is not the case. Capital defense attorney Patrick McCann 
claimed that "pretty much everybody who's been released or commuted on death 
row would have already been executed, so not only would we have done wrong, we 
wouldn't even know we had." This push to expedite appeals puts the innocent on 
a direct collision course with execution.

While death row cases are expensive, long and taxing, we must pay a price for a 
good and thorough legal process. Texas wants to limit post-conviction appeals 
to save time and money, but the potential human and moral costs far outweigh 
the state's arguments. At the end of the day, we'd have to accept putting 
innocent lives at a greater risk of execution. If we allow ourselves to obsess 
with cost and time rather than the value of human life, our justice system will 
necessarily fail its mission of "justice for all," becoming nothing more than 
an elaborate charade.

(source: Opinion, LiamVerses is a Plan II and environmental engineering 
freshman from San Antonio----The (Univ. Texas) Daily Texan)








NEW HAMPSHIRE:

Deserving death: Respecting innocent life



The New Hampshire House has a strange way of showing respect for life.

The House is considering the repeal of New Hampshire's death penalty, which 
applies the ultimate sanction to those who commit the worst crimes, including 
the murder of a police officer, murder during the commission of a kidnapping, 
rape, or robbery, and murder for hire.

These crimes tear at the fabric of society, and cry out for justice more 
certain and severe than a life sentence. Those who commit capital murder have 
chosen to forfeit their own lives.

Former state Supreme Court Justice Chuck Douglas argues today that the death 
penalty should be expanded to cover hate crime homicides.

Opponents of the death penalty argue that contrary to centuries of legal 
tradition, capital punishment should be banned so that no lives are taken 
needlessly.

This respect for life was not apparent last month, when the House voted to 
leave innocent infants without any protection under the law because they happen 
to be on the wrong end of the birth canal.

In rejecting a ban on late-term abortions, the House decided that innocent life 
has no value. It would indeed be strange to protect the most guilty.

(source: Editorial, Union Leader)








GEORGIA:

Former Prosecutors, Judges Join Bid to Upend Conviction in Case of 
Race-Screened Jury----High-profile Georgia lawyers have thrown their weight 
behind an effort to overturn a decades-old conviction based on the recent 
discovery that prosecutors in a 1977 murder case allegedly kept 
African-Americans off the jury and kept track of them by noting the letter "N" 
beside their names.



High-profile Georgia lawyers have thrown their weight behind an effort to 
overturn a decades-old conviction based on the recent discovery that 
prosecutors in a 1977 murder case allegedly kept African-Americans off the jury 
and kept track of them by noting the letter "N" beside their names.

An all-white jury convicted Johnny Gates, a black man, of the rape and murder 
of a white woman and sentenced him to death. After 26 years on death row, he 
was re-sentenced to life without parole following a remand on an intellectual 
disability issue.

"He was tried in 1977, before there was any exclusion to the death penalty for 
intellectual disability," said his defense attorney, Patrick Mulvaney of the 
Southern Center for Human Rights. "But that did not end the life sentence he is 
serving for a conviction based on racial discrimination."

The revelation, according to Gates' counsel and the amici, came when 
prosecutors' notes from the 1977 trial were recently produced.

Gates was 21 when he was tried. He is now 62.

The amicus brief, filed Monday, said: "Every black prospective juror in 
Defendant Johnny Lee Gates's case was labeled with an 'N' to identify their 
race and assigned the lowest juror ranking in the prosecutors' jury selection 
notes. Subsequently every qualified black juror was struck by the prosecution 
so that Mr. Gates, a black man, was tried by an all-white jury. This egregious 
conduct was not limited to Mr. Gates's case, but formed part of a pattern of 
racial discrimination infecting jury selection in every death penalty case with 
a black defendant in Muscogee County from 1975 to 1979."

"This conduct not only violates the United States and Georgia Constitutions, 
but also visits tremendous harm upon the judicial system, defendants, 
prospective jurors, and the community. As former prosecutors, a former Chief 
Justice of the Supreme Court of Georgia, and a former President of the Georgia 
State Conference of the NAACP, Amici are committed to advancing a fair and 
impartial justice system. The conduct presented in Mr. Gates's case is anathema 
to that goal," the brief continued. "It must be fully examined on the merits 
and not swept away as the State desires. The State engaged in systemic racial 
discrimination, hid the evidence for 4 decades, and now that this Court has 
forced that evidence into the open, the State seeks to avoid its examination. 
The Court should not allow the State to do so."

The prosecutor was longtime District Attorney Doug Pullen, who later became a 
judge on the Muscogee County Superior Court. Pullen retired in 2011. He could 
not immediately be reached for comment but in at least 1 recent report denied 
using any discriminatory practices in his jury selection process as a 
prosecutor.

Muscogee County District Attorney Julia Slater also could not be immediately 
reached.

The amici who signed the brief are:

Larry D. Thompson, deputy U.S. attorney general from 2001 to 2003 and U.S. 
attorney for the Northern District of Georgia from 1982 to 1986.

Leah Ward Sears, chief justice of the Georgia Supreme Court from 2005 to 2009, 
presiding justice from 2001 to 2005, and a justice from 1992 to 2001. She is 
currently a partner at the Atlanta office of Smith, Gambrell & Russell.

Robert Barr, who represented Georgia's 7th Congressional District in the U.S. 
House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003, and served as the U.S. attorney for 
the Northern District of Georgia from 1986 to 1990.

Jeffrey Brickman, district attorney for DeKalb County in 2004, assistant U.S. 
attorney in the Northern District of Georgia from 1997 to 2004, and an 
assistant D.A. in DeKalb County from 1989 to 1997.

Francys Johnson, a civil rights attorney, pastor, and educator who served as 
president of the Georgia State Conference of the NAACP from 2013 to 2017.

Frank C. Winn, district attorney for the Douglas Judicial Circuit from 1983 to 
1990. and an assistant D.A. in the Tallapoosa Judicial Circuit from 1978 to 
1982.

Mulvaney and co-counsel from the Georgia Innocence Project sought the 
prosecution's notes for the trial, but didn't see them until March, after 
Senior Judge John Allen ordered them to be turned over.

On March 2, the state produced its jury notes. They revealed that prosecutors 
labeled white prospective jurors as "W" and black prospective jurors as "N," 
and further singled out black prospective jurors for strikes by marking a dot 
next to the black prospective jurors' names, the lawyers say. They also say the 
prosecutors described black prospective jurors in terms such as "slow," "old + 
ignorant," "con artist," "hostile" and "fat" and described 1 white prospective 
juror as a "top juror" because he "has to deal with 150 to 200 of these people 
that work for his construction co."

The case is State v. Johnny Lee Gates, No. SU-75-CR-38335.

(source: Daily Report)








ALABAMA:

Convicted murderer asks for death penalty

A Chilton County capital murder case took an unusual turn Tuesday as the 
convicted murderer asked to be sentenced to death.

It's never happened before in the state of Alabama, according to a prosecutor.

James Osgood was convicted and sentenced to death in 2014. However, due to a 
technicality, the appeals court ruled a new jury must determine whether Osgood 
should be sentenced to death or life without parole. That phase was scheduled 
for this week.

This is not the standard set up for a capital case. The court of criminal 
appeals maintained Osgood's conviction, but threw out the jury's decision to 
sentence Osgood to death. They didn't believe the judge offered the right 
instructions on how to make a decision on Osgood's sentence.

This week prosecutors were in the process of striking a new jury for what's 
called the penalty phase, which is like a mini trial, when Osgood spoke up and 
said he wanted to skip this part and be sentenced to death.

Osgood told the judge he was an "eye for an eye kind of guy."

"I firmly believe if you can't do the time, don't do the crime. A couple of 
years ago I really screwed up. I'm guilty and I deserve death. That's what I 
want," Osgood said.

Osgood also said he knew the judicial override law had changed in Alabama - 
where a judge couldn't overturn a sentence in a capital case - and he wanted to 
ensure he was sentenced to death.

"When I heard the appeals court set aside the death sentence it worried me, now 
that the law has changed, judge you couldn't up it to death," Osgood said.

Attorneys made calls across the state, and they were told this is legal.

Osgood will be sentenced to death for the murder of Tracy Brown Wednesday at 9 
a.m.

Brown, 46, was killed in October 2010. Authorities say Osgood and his 
girlfriend, Tonya van Dyke, beat and sexually abused Brown before slitting her 
throat.

(source: WBRC news)








LOUISIANA:

Bill proposed to eliminate Louisiana death penalty by August 1st



A Senate judiciary committee on Tuesday approved a bill that would eliminate 
the death penalty in Louisiana effective August 1.

Sen. J.P. Morrell, D-New Orleans, authored the bill, reasoning that the death 
penalty is an outdated and costly means of punishment.

"The death penalty is an archaic holdover from a time where we were not as 
civilized as we are today," Morrell said.

Sen. Bodi White, R-Central, provided the only vocal opposition. He argued that 
abolishing the death penalty would have no effect on the state's high rate of 
violent crime.

Morrell responded that "we have had the death penalty on the books since the 
founding of our state, and it has not deterred violent crime."

"Increasingly, we are finding individuals that commit these violent crimes are 
mentally unbalanced," Morrell said. "Many of them are tortured, damaged people 
who do horrific things because they don't value human life."

Morrell's bill advanced by a 4-1 vote. Two Democratic senators, Troy Carter of 
New Orleans and Regina Barrow of Baton Rouge, voted for the bill, as did 2 
Republicans, Sen. Dan Claitor of Baton Rouge, the committee chairman, and Sen. 
Fred Mills of Parks.

White cast the lone no vote. Sen. Yvonne Colomb, D-Baton Rouge, and Sen. 
Jonathan Perry, R-Kaplan, were not present.

Since 2000, 7 people on death row in Louisiana had been exonerated, while only 
2 had been executed, according to the Louisiana Budget Project. Louisiana 
conducted its last execution in 2010.

A federal court has barred the state from carrying out executions since 2014 in 
part because of difficulties in obtaining the drugs considered humane for 
lethal injections.

Louisiana is 1 of 32 states with a death penalty. There are 72 people on death 
row in Louisiana.

Similar bills to abolish the death penalty were introduced last year by Sen. 
Claitor and Rep. Terry Landry, D-New Iberia. Claitor???s passed in a committee 
but was shelved after Landry???s bill failed to advance from a House panel.

A much bigger test of the proposal to end the death penalty could come 
Wednesday when a new bill by Landry, HB162, will be considered before the same 
House committee that killed his proposal last year.

No members of the public voiced opposition to the proposal at Tuesday's 
hearing.

Representatives from the Louisiana District Attorney's Association and the 
Louisiana Sheriffs' Association filed red cards in opposition to the bill but 
did not speak, possibly electing to save their dissent for the more 
conservative House committee.

In the meeting Tuesday, Claitor, the committee chairman, brought up the 
financial burden of capital cases. Morrell agreed, saying in particular that 
the Louisiana Public Defender Board spends a "tremendous" portion of its annual 
funding outsourcing capital cases to more expensive criminal defense attorneys.

A 2016 study by the Louisiana Budget Project reported that one-third of the 
Louisiana Public Defender Board's annual budget of $33 million was spent on 
capital cases.

(source: KALB news)



OHIO:

Too Much Doubt----After Decades on Death Row, William Montgomery Was Granted a 
Reprieve. Yet His Dubious Conviction Still Stands.



2 weeks before he was scheduled to die for a crime he swore he did not commit, 
52-year-old William T. Montgomery was granted a reprieve by Ohio Gov. John 
Kasich. "Too much doubt" was the rallying cry by Ohioans to Stop Executions as 
they flooded the governor's office with petitions. The Ohio Parole Board 
agreed, recommending clemency by a vote of 6 to 4. 10 days later, on March 26, 
Kasich stopped the April 11 execution and commuted Montgomery's sentence to 
life without parole.

Montgomery has insisted on his innocence for more than 30 years. In early 
March, forensic experts flew on their own dime to speak at his clemency hearing 
in Columbus. "As a forensic scientist, I normally do not get involved in 
petitions and politics," Richard Eikelenboom of the Colorado-based Independent 
Forensic Services wrote on his website, linking to a Change.org page created by 
Montgomery's supporters. "But in this case there is so much at stake."

Montgomery was convicted of killing young women, Cynthia Tincher and Debra 
Ogle, in Toledo in 1986. They were discovered 4 days apart, both shot in the 
head. Montgomery knew the victims - and a ballistics analyst traced the 
evidence to his gun. Police concluded he killed both women on the same day, 
March 8, 1986, first murdering Ogle in order to rob her, then shooting Tincher 
to cover it up.

But a review of autopsy records, photographs, and trial transcripts by 
Independent Forensic Services cast doubt on the state's theory. At the clemency 
hearing, Eikelenboom's lab partner and wife, Selma Eikelenboom-Schieveld, 
presented evidence to show that Ogle likely died closer to when her body was 
discovered, on the night of March 12. Her analysis compounded long existing 
problems with the case. No blood, fingerprints, or other key forensic evidence 
linked Montgomery to the crime. Nor did he have a clear motive. Prosecutors won 
the death penalty by arguing that Montgomery killed Ogle in the course of a 
robbery, yet none of Ogle's belongings were found in his possession. In fact, 
her wallet was found in the bedroom of a different man, Montgomery's 
co-defendant and the state's main witness against him: 24-year-old Glover 
Heard.

In their clemency petition, lawyers for Montgomery emphasized Heard's lack of 
credibility. The evidence pointed as much to Heard as to Montgomery. Moreover, 
Heard had cut a deal with the state "to avoid the death penalty and to avoid 
prosecution for an unrelated charge of gross sexual imposition with a 
5-year-old child." In exchange for testifying against Montgomery, Heard pleaded 
guilty to being complicit in the murders of Tincher and Ogle. He was sentenced 
to 15 years to life and remains behind bars.

Montgomery's was the 3rd scheduled execution in a row not to go forward in 
Ohio. While Kasich has signed off on more than a dozen executions while in 
office, he has also commuted 6 death sentences. "That's significant - and it 
speaks to a real discomfort with the death penalty as a whole," said Abraham 
Bonowitz of Death Penalty Action. Concerns over innocence have played no small 
part. In 2014, Kasich spared the life of a man named Arthur Tyler. Like 
Montgomery, Tyler was convicted in 1986 and sentenced to die based largely on 
the word of a co-defendant who cut a deal with the state. The parole board was 
so troubled by Tyler's case that a majority recommended commuting his sentence 
to life with the possibility of immediate parole. Instead, to Tyler's dismay, 
Kasich commuted his sentence to life without parole.

Once the looming threat of execution is gone, the urgency around a questionable 
case can evaporate.

Cases like Tyler's and Montgomery's reveal a trap that can follow a reprieve 
based on an innocence claim. Once the looming threat of execution is gone, the 
urgency around a questionable case can evaporate. Jon Oebker, a former 
prosecutor who now represents Montgomery, has vowed to continue appealing his 
client's case, however. "It's clear to us that he did not receive a fair 
trial," he said over the phone as Kasich weighed clemency last month.

Oebker spent years on the opposite side of the death penalty fight, defending 
convictions for the capital crimes unit of the Ohio Attorney General's Office. 
He remembers going before the parole board at clemency hearings. "I'd be 
pounding the table: 'All these courts looked at it, they all affirmed it, no 
court reversed it,'" he recalled. But that didn't mean the courts got it right. 
The procedural history in Montgomery's case reflects serious divisions within 
reviewing courts when it comes to the issue of prosecutorial misconduct. After 
a federal district judge vacated Montgomery's conviction in 2007 based on the 
state's failure to disclose exculpatory evidence, the 6th Circuit Court of 
Appeals reversed the decision, sparking angry dissents.

It is unclear what lies in store for Montgomery now. But there is good reason 
to believe he might not be convicted today. Surviving jurors from his 1986 
trial have expressed deep misgivings about his case. One man acknowledged as 
early as 1992 that he believed Montgomery could have been rehabilitated due to 
his age and he did not know why he had sentenced him to die. More recently, in 
a signed affidavit, the man admitted harboring doubts over Montgomery's guilt 
at the time. "Given the information I have today, I am not sure I would have 
found Mr. Montgomery guilty or voted for the death penalty," he said.

The case of William Montgomery is hard to piece together. The records are 
incomplete and the trial transcript hard to follow. Memories are hazy - it was 
a generation ago.

National news dominated the front page of the Toledo Blade on March 9, 1986. 
President Ronald Reagan was urging Congress to commit funding to the Contras in 
Nicaragua. A commission was investigating the explosion of the Challenger space 
shuttle the year before. But below the fold, a headline ran above a 
black-and-white photo of Cynthia Tincher. Her body had been discovered on the 
side of the road at the intersection of Wenz and Angola in Toledo. Her hands 
were folded in her lap. She had been shot in the head.

The article described Tincher as hardworking and kind. Since graduating high 
school in 1984, she had been employed at a residential center "for severely and 
profoundly retarded people." Her mother said she planned to study child 
psychology.

Horror at Tincher's murder gave way to fear and dread. Her roommate, 
20-year-old Debra Ogle, had not shown up for work on March 8 - her car was 
found in an alley the next day. Ogle's parents went on TV to urge anyone with 
information to come forward. But on the rainy evening of March 12, Toledo 
police discovered Ogle's body in a wooded area not far from where Tincher was 
found. She wore a black jacket and white high-tops and was carrying a Walkman 
cassette player, the earphones hanging from her neck.

Toledo police said they had been led to the body by William Montgomery, a 
20-year-old black man with an outstanding warrant for forged checks. He had 
been arrested following a tip from Toledo's Crime Stoppers hotline, which came 
from a man in the local jail. The caller said a man named Glover Heard had 
boasted to him over the phone about seeing 2 white women get murdered. The next 
day, Heard gave police the name of an alibi witness, who led them to 
Montgomery.

Heard and Montgomery knew each other - they had gone with friends to a 
nightclub on the night before Tincher was found dead. Montgomery paid 
everyone's way - he was known to carry plenty of cash - and after closing out 
the club well after midnight, he returned to his uncle's house with his 
girlfriend and Heard. The couple got into a fight. Montgomery's uncle would 
testify that when he went to break it up, he found Montgomery with a gun - a 
.380 Bersa. His uncle took the gun and put it on top of the refrigerator. After 
Heard and Montgomery left in a cab, Montgomery's uncle realized the gun was 
gone.

It is at this point that Heard's and Montgomery's alleged accounts diverge. 
According to police, Montgomery said he did not have enough cash left to get 
all the way home. So he told the cab driver to drop them off along the way, at 
the apartment shared by Ogle and Tincher. Acquaintances would confirm that 
Montgomery was friends with the women. Ogle was getting ready for work when 
Montgomery and Heard showed up, sometime around 5 a.m. She agreed to give them 
a ride. Montgomery said she dropped him off at his apartment, then drove off 
with Heard - it was the last time he ever saw her.

But according to Heard, Montgomery ordered Ogle to pull over alongside a field. 
He made her get out of the car and walk about 40 meters, toward a wooded area. 
Heard said he saw Ogle squatting down. Then he heard gunshots. "I looked again 
and she was lying on the ground."

There were good reasons to be skeptical of Heard's story. His account had 
changed wildly over time. In one early interview, he told police he'd spotted a 
drug dealer driving Ogle's car. In another, Heard said a stranger at a car wash 
had told him about the murders. Then there was the fact that Ogle's wallet and 
credit cards had been found in his dresser drawer - and her abandoned car had 
been found in an alley behind his home.

But perhaps most obvious was his incentive to lie to save himself, not just 
from the death penalty but from a charge of sexually assaulting a young child. 
Nevertheless, Heard's accusation and timeline became the basis for the state's 
case against Montgomery.

As Montgomery went to trial in the fall of 1986, publicity and emotions ran 
high. Pro-death penalty activists rallied outside; one sign read "Deb and Cindy 
are dead, now it's Montgomery's turn to die." Inside the courtroom, spectators 
sat in the first couple of rows wearing buttons identifying them as "Mothers of 
Murdered Children."

It was hard to find anyone who had not heard of the case. "It took us a while 
to get a jury," recalled veteran defense attorney Ronnie Wingate, who 
represented Montgomery at trial. It was the 1st death penalty trial of his 
career. The atmosphere was racially charged. Wingate recalls entering the 
courtroom one day and hearing somebody shout the N-word at him. "I could not 
say who it was - didn't know who it was," he said. To their credit, he added, 
afterward, "they walked up to me and actually apologized."

Representing the state was James Bates, head of the criminal division of the 
Lucas County Prosecutor's Office. Bates arrived at the office in 1972, the same 
year the landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Furman v. Georgia imposed a 
4-year moratorium on executions. After Ohio passed its revised death penalty 
law in 1981, Bates won the state's 1st new death sentence against a man named 
Billy Rogers, convicted of raping and murdering a child. The conviction didn't 
stick - Rogers, who had the reported IQ of a child, was retried twice and 
eventually resentenced to life.

Joining Bates was Lucas County Assistant District Attorney James Yavorcik, 
previously a reporter for the Toledo Blade. As a college journalist at Ohio 
State, Yavorcik once famously helped free a man falsely accused of murder after 
his investigation into the case became a cover story for the Columbus Monthly. 
After moving to the DA's office, Yavorcik tried a number of murder cases 
alongside Bates before leaving for private practice in 1987. In an email, he 
recalled the evidence against Montgomery as "overwhelming."

In his opening statement, Yavorcik described the "senseless" murders of Tincher 
and Ogle as part of a "joint criminal enterprise." After Montgomery killed 
Ogle, he said, Heard disposed of the stolen property - and "it was Mr. 
Montgomery's job to dispose of the one witness that could tie [them] to this 
killing." The state held that after Montgomery shot Ogle in the field in the 
early hours of March 8, he drove the car back to the women's apartment, took 
the gun, and ordered Heard to take the car. He then forced Tincher out of her 
home, into her car, and to the intersection of Angola and Wenz, where he shot 
her in the head before fleeing on foot just after 7 a.m.

To prove this, prosecutors called witnesses who had seen Tincher's car that 
morning - and recalled someone in a dark jacket with a hood leaving the 
vehicle. The descriptions were shaky. "I have no idea if it was a sweatshirt, a 
jacket, or what it was," 1 man testified. Like the other witnesses, he could 
not even tell if the person wearing it was a man or a woman. "All I know is it 
had a hood on it and it was pulled tight around his face - or the person's 
face." No one said they saw Montgomery wearing a dark hooded jacket the night 
before. But police had found a jacket that matched the description at his home. 
At trial, an employee at a local gun shop testified that Montgomery had worn "a 
jacket, like a windbreaker jacket with a hood," weeks before the murders, on 
the day she sold him a .380 Bersa and some ammo - and that the hood was "tied 
tight under the chin." Asked on the stand if the jacket had been tested for 
blood, Toledo Police Sgt. Larry Przeslawski said, "I don't recall at this 
time."

The state also seized on one piece of clothing Montgomery had actually worn the 
night he went to the club: a blue pinstriped suit jacket he borrowed from his 
uncle. Witnesses said Montgomery had taken the jacket to the dry cleaner later 
in the day on March 8 - and an employee recalled it was soaking wet, dripping 
with an unidentified yellowish-brown liquid. During closing arguments, Bates 
freely described it as "dripping with the blood of Debra Ogle."

Przeslawski was a key witness for the state. He described how Montgomery led 
police to the body and gave various incriminating statements. According to 
Przeslawski, Montgomery insisted he only knew where to look for Ogle's body 
because Heard had told him where it was. But it was hard to know what exactly 
he said. Montgomery's statements had not been taped. Przeslawski simply 
summarized them in a report weeks later, explaining that he had relied on his 
memory, notes, and input from other officers. Wingate was not entitled to 
Przeslawski's notes. And while he had been provided with the summarized 
statements from his client, other witness statements were kept from him until 
the trial was underway. In 1986 - and for decades afterward - trials were 
governed by a part of Ohio's criminal code known as Rule 16. Under the rule, 
defense lawyers were barred from seeing previous statements by state witnesses 
until moments before they had to cross-examine them. "It basically infringes 
upon a defendant's right to effective assistance of counsel - a defendant's 
right to cross-examine, vigorously, a witness against him," Wingate said. "But 
those were the rules we had to play by."

Wingate repeatedly asked state witnesses if they had spoken to police. If they 
had, he requested permission to see their previous statements but was only 
allowed to do so on a case-by-case basis, and once the judge had reviewed them 
for any inconsistencies. Bates and Yavorcik were present for the review, 
convincing the judge to deny access to certain items. At times there was no 
written record at all.

Wingate was diplomatic in recalling Bates and Yavorcik. "I had known both of 
them and I had thought both were very fair," he said. But the system "was 
geared towards a conviction."

Bates theorized that Montgomery had gone to the victims??? home "for sexual 
purposes," then killed them because "they said no."

On October 7, 1986, Glover Heard took the stand. He described how Montgomery 
directed Ogle to drive and park at the side of the road, and how he then heard 
the shots and saw her on the ground. He said he did little to confront 
Montgomery about the murder. "I asked him once and he said, 'You don't want to 
know,'" Heard testified. "And I left it at that."

In an interview, Detective Arthur Marx had told Heard it would have been 
"physically impossible" for him to see what he said he saw. Marx had recovered 
Ogle's body. It was twice as far away from the road as Heard had estimated, 
Marx said. Plus, it would still have been dark at that hour. But on the stand, 
Marx said he had just been trying to keep Heard talking. Another detective 
testified that it was Heard who led police to Ogle's body, only to correct 
himself - "I get the names confused between the 2 people," he said.

In total, 32 witnesses testified for the state. The defense called none. "I 
honestly don't know" why, Wingate said, speculating that he probably felt the 
state had not met its burden of proof in the case. In a fiery closing argument, 
Bates theorized that Montgomery had gone to the victims' home "for sexual 
purposes," then killed them because "they said no." On October 9, the jury 
found Montgomery guilty.

Defense witnesses were called during the sentencing phase. But they seemed to 
do more harm than good. An uncle of Montgomery's painted a frightening portrait 
of a family marked by generations of violence. Jurors learned that Montgomery 
had been convicted of manslaughter as a teenager after shooting an uncle who 
had groomed him to deal drugs, apparently in self-defense. If the goal was to 
explain the trauma of his upbringing, a clinical psychologist who diagnosed him 
with mental illness gave especially sabotaging testimony. "I was not however 
able to find that this psychosis would be a mitigating factor," Dr. Gerald 
Briskin said. (What he meant was that his analysis did not support an insanity 
defense.) Briskin described Montgomery as coddled, with an inflated sense of 
self, pointing to such evidence as Montgomery's signature, which included the 
title "Mr." - a flourish Briskin found self-aggrandizing. Montgomery insisted 
on his innocence because he could not admit there was anything wrong with him, 
Briskin said. As for Montgomery's potential to respond to treatment, "the 
prognosis would be guarded."

But the most bizarre moment came shortly after the jury began deliberating. A 
juror sent a note to the judge explaining that, as a psychiatric patient 
undergoing shock therapy in 1964, she had seen Dr. Briskin in a dream. "He was 
fat, carried a briefcase and a clock," she wrote. "I thought he looked like 
Satan." Rather than remove the juror, the judge asked her a series of 
questions. Would the incident she described affect her ability to be fair and 
impartial? No, she said. "OK, very good," the judge said, and sent her back to 
the jury room.

On October 11, the jury sentenced Montgomery to death.

"All you can do is look at your client, say, 'I'm sorry,' you know?" Wingate 
said. He has tried a lot of capital cases since then. The losses don't get 
easier. "It eats at you."

Ohio had not executed anyone in more than 20 years when Montgomery arrived at 
the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville. Derrick Wayne Jamison, 
who was sent to death row in 1985, remembers playing basketball with 
Montgomery, whom he called Terry. "They used to let us play the guards," he 
said. Jamison remembers Montgomery as well-liked; he would help other guys with 
their law work.

But in the 1990s, everything changed. The 1993 Lucasville prison riot broke up 
and isolated the death row population, putting men on 23-hour-lockdown. A few 
years later, a man named Wilford Berry Jr. gave up his appeals, becoming the 
state's 1st "volunteer" for execution. The other men hated him, Jamison 
recalled. "They knew that once they started killing, they wouldn't stop." After 
Berry was executed in 1999, "it was like a dark cloud came over the state of 
Ohio," Jamison said. Since Montgomery has been on death row, 55 people have 
been executed. "Can you imagine what that has done to that man's mind?"

One record revealed that both jackets had indeed been tested for blood - with 
negative results.

Jamison was exonerated in 2005, after his attorneys discovered that prosecutors 
had withheld key police reports from his 1984 trial. Under the U.S. Supreme 
Court ruling in Brady v. Maryland, the state was obligated to disclose such 
exculpatory evidence. Yet Brady violations remain a persistent problem. In 
Montgomery's case, post-conviction attorneys filed a Freedom of Information Act 
request in 1992, seeking records in his case. They received a trove of police 
reports that apparently had never been disclosed. The items are described in 
Montgomery's post-conviction filings. One record revealed that both jackets had 
indeed been tested for blood - with negative results. Another report mentioned 
a pair of Nikes belonging to Heard, which police suspected might be stained 
with blood. Yet another showed that witnesses had seen a maroon car parked near 
Tincher's car early on March 8 - police photographs showed a similar vehicle 
parked at Heard's home.

There were also alternative suspects besides Heard who had never been revealed. 
One was Ogle's boyfriend. Another was Tincher's stepfather, who had been 
accused of sexually molesting and stalking her. But he was a police officer - 
and was close friends with Przeslawski, who had taken him to identify Tincher's 
body after responding to the scene. According to the post-conviction filings, a 
key piece of potential evidence - Tincher's diary - had been turned over to the 
stepfather, "effectively destroying it."

But most shocking was a hand-written police report from March 12, 1986 - days 
after both women had allegedly been murdered. A man had called the Toledo 
Police Department to say that at 1:20 a.m., he and several friends had been in 
the parking lot of Ogle's apartment building "when they saw a blue Ford Escort 
with Debbie Ogle driving around the complex." Later they saw her again, with "a 
white male with long side burns. She did not appear distressed."

The withheld evidence formed part of the basis for Montgomery's writ of habeas 
corpus. In 2007, U.S. District Judge Solomon Oliver overturned Montgomery's 
conviction based on the withheld police report. In a 124-page opinion, he wrote 
that "the state's case was not airtight and that it could have been undermined 
by sufficient contradictory evidence."

The Lucas County Prosecutor's Office responded swiftly, obtaining affidavits 
from the individuals who had claimed to see Ogle alive in 1986. They said that 
they had been mistaken - it was Ogle's sister they had seen. "People often 
mistook me for Debbie," the sister wrote in an affidavit of her own, confirming 
she drove a blue Escort. Prosecutors filed a motion asking Oliver to reverse 
his decision and defended the lack of disclosure, pointing out that the report 
would only have undermined the defense's theory pointing to Heard as the real 
killer, since he was already in custody on March 12. But Oliver was unmoved. 
"To permit a prosecutor to withhold exculpatory evidence without repercussion 
would set poor precedent," he wrote. The proper place to consider the new 
witness statements, he added, "is at a retrial in state court."

In a phone call, Yavorcik, who now practices personal injury law, denied any 
misconduct. "I wish I had a great story about how I concocted some crazy scheme 
to keep this out," he said, adding that, as a former reporter, he knew a good 
story needed a villain. But he had no recollection of ever seeing the report. 
"Now, should I have seen it? Probably," he said. "But I know one thing: There 
was certainly no conscious decision to keep that from the defense." Bates, who 
is now a Lucas County judge, echoed what Yavorcik said. In a phone call, he 
emphasized that the pinstriped jacket had been cleaned three times, which 
accounted for the lack of blood found by the lab. As for the dark jacket with 
the hood, he said, "I don't recall that particular jacket."

The same year as Oliver's ruling, the American Bar Association released a 
sweeping review of Ohio's death penalty system. Over nearly 500 pages, it 
listed areas in dire need of reform, most pressing among them: "Inadequate 
Procedures to Protect the Innocent." The ABA called for a moratorium on the 
death penalty, to no avail. Prosecutors continued seeking death sentences and 
protecting old convictions. In Montgomery's case, the task had fallen to Lucas 
County Prosecutor Julia Bates - the wife of James Bates, who first sent him to 
death row.

In October 2009, a panel of the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the 
District Court's decision and remanded Montgomery's case for a new trial. But 
in August 2011, in an en banc ruling, the 6th Circuit reinstated Montgomery's 
death sentence on the grounds that the police report was not material. In a 
vociferous dissent, Circuit Court Judge Gilbert Merritt decried the majority 
opinion for giving "a disincentive for prosecutors to comply with the law." It 
was impossible to know what the outcome would have been if the police report 
had been given to the defense in 1986, he argued. The right thing would be to 
allow Montgomery "a jury trial free of gross prosecutorial misconduct."

Shortly after Montgomery's death sentence was reinstated, in November 2011, a 
Dutch woman who corresponded with Montgomery contacted Richard Eikelenboom. 
Originally from the Netherlands, the DNA expert had spent years investigating 
cases for defense attorneys and prosecutors alike. He was struck by the United 
States' adversarial system, in which forensic scientists working for defendants 
were treated like the enemy. "I used to work for the National Lab in the 
Netherlands, and they always called me 'Crimefighter,'" Eikelenboom said. Yet 
he and his wife were often derided in the U.S. as "hired guns."

Eikelenboom remembers telling Montgomery what he tells all prospective clients: 
"We're going to work for you, but if we find things which are incriminating, we 
also report that." He did not have access to any of the physical evidence in 
the case - to his dismay, much of it had apparently been destroyed, making DNA 
testing far less likely. Still, within the case records, some things jumped 
out. For one, Ogle's death records contained contradictory information. The 
coroner's verdict said Ogle "came to her death officially on the 12th day of 
March, 1986," but in the section on cause and manner of death, the coroner had 
typed: "Homicide/Gunshot Wound, 3/8/86." It looked like he had changed his 
conclusion, with no explanation.

To Eikelenboom-Schieveld, medical director of Independent Forensic Services, 
the photos suggested that the later date - which was the day Ogle was 
discovered - was more accurate: Her corpse showed few signs of decomposition, 
or hints of animal or insect activity. What's more, police reported that she 
had been found facedown on the ground, but photos showed lividity - areas where 
blood pools and settles after death - on Ogle's side and back. Because lividity 
becomes fixed after about 12 hours, this suggested she had been killed closer 
to her discovery by police, who moved her body at the scene. In a report, 
Eikelenboom-Schieveld estimated that Ogle had died "somewhere between 12 hours 
to a maximum of 36 hours prior to discovery of the body."

Under Ohio law, a motion for a new trial based on newly discovered evidence 
must be filed within 120 days of conviction. But exceptions can be made if a 
defendant was prevented from discovering the evidence sooner. In 2013, 
Montgomery's attorneys filed a delayed motion for a new trial before the Lucas 
County Court of Common Pleas based on Independent Forensic Services' findings. 
There was reason to hope Lucas County Prosecutor Julia Bates might even be open 
to considering the evidence. In a Toledo Blade story published the same year as 
Montgomery's motion, Bates revealed her personal misgivings about the death 
penalty. Capital cases were "tortuous" for all involved, she said, including 
for victims' relatives, who can wait decades to see a sentence carried out. In 
capital cases, she added, "the guilt should be absolute. It should be 
unquestionable."

One prosecutor dismissed the apparent lack of insect or animal activity on 
Ogle's body, saying she did not see many flies in Toledo in March.

But her concerns would not extend to Montgomery. Responding to his motion, 
Bates argued he had failed to show "clear and convincing proof" that he could 
not have submitted such a forensic report in 1987, as Ohio law requires. In 
2015, a judge agreed, upholding his conviction.

"Prosecutors want to win," said Jeff Gamso, a longtime Ohio defense attorney 
and legal blogger who practiced for years in Toledo. "The rule is, we're out to 
seek justice, and whatever that means. But the truth is, everybody wants to win 
when we get into the courtroom. And some are more aggressive and unfair about 
it than others. The office develops a culture." Lucas County was far from 
notorious when it came to the death penalty or misconduct, he added. But it was 
certainly not immune.

James Patrick, the Lucas County coroner, is in his 80s and still working in the 
office, although he no longer handles homicides. Over the phone, he denied ever 
changing Ogle's death date. Despite the "came to her death" language, he said, 
the March 12 entry actually referred to the official date she was found. He 
also dismissed the findings presented by the Independent Forensic Services 
experts at Montgomery's clemency hearing. Their sole job, for one, is "to 
create doubt," he said. Although he did not dispute the scientific basis for 
their analysis, he said it did not apply in this case, for one simple reason: 
Ogle's body was frozen when it was found. A seasoned investigator - a former 
Toledo police officer - had gone out to the scene and recorded his findings, 
which was the standard 1st step in such cases, Patrick explained. "We don't do 
anything until we have that report." He then read it out loud. It was a brief 
summary of the state's theory. Ogle's "frozen body" had been found as part of 
"a double homicide that occurred during the early morning hours of 3/8," the 
report asserted, adding that 1 of 2 black suspects had led officers to the 
scene. "The fact that the body is frozen renders all the crap about the lack of 
infestation and all the rest of these things totally irrelevant," Patrick said.

It is true that frozen temperatures can slow the decomposition process. Yet, as 
noted by the Independent Forensic Services report, temperatures rose in Toledo 
between March 8 and March 12, reaching the low 60s. Patrick countered that 
ditches and wooded areas tend to be cooler. "I don't know what the temperature 
at the spot that she was dumped at was over the period of time," he said. "All 
I can say is that a very competent observer said that she was frozen when she 
was discovered."

To Eikelenboom, the argument was absurd - and clearly influenced by the state's 
original theory of the crime. "If you work very closely with police, you have 
to be very careful not to become biased," he said. It offended him to hear 
people "talk away" scientific evidence. Yet he sees it all the time. At 
Montgomery's clemency hearing, 1 Lucas County prosecutor dismissed the apparent 
lack of insect or animal activity on Ogle's body, saying she did not see many 
flies in Toledo in March.

Today Eikelenboom believes there is a lot more to be learned from whatever 
evidence might still remain in the case. "In '86, forensic science was not as 
advanced," he said. Today, he seriously questions whether both Ogle and Tincher 
were even killed with the same gun. Whatever the next steps in the case, he was 
"very happy" to hear news of the commutation.

The sentiment was not shared by Ogle's mother, the sole victims' relative at 
the clemency hearing. "It's just not easy after 32 years," she told the Toledo 
Blade. But Julia Bates did not protest. "As long as he is locked up for every 
day for the rest of his life and never, ever harms another soul, justice will 
be served," she told the paper. At the clemency hearing, Bates insisted she had 
no doubts about Montgomery's guilt. Nor did she concede there had been any 
misconduct. According to Kevin Warner, head of Ohioans to Stop Executions, who 
attended the hearing, her position was, "I have insider information about this 
case, you know. And my husband, had he known about these police reports that 
were withheld, he would have turned them over."

For his own part, James Bates was less concerned by the commutation than by the 
clemency hearing. "Generally at clemency hearings, the defendant asks for 
mercy, shows remorse," he said. Here, a defense attorney brought "so-called 
experts" to debunk the state's case. "I've been an attorney for 45 years," he 
said. "When we're in court, we have to play by certain rules. A clemency 
hearing doesn't seem to have any rules."

(source: theintercept.com)