Wrong man could have been executed



By Dayton Daily News

Saturday, September 13, 2008

Recent news is a reminder of just how dangerous the death penalty is.

Law enforcement officers in Hocking County, near Chillicothe, believe they
have solved a 1982 double murder of a young couple. They arrested two men
after one confessed. But in 1984 the wrong man was convicted and sentenced
to die for this crime.

Dale Johnston, a onetime Xenia resident, spent five years on Death Row
before he was released after his conviction was reversed by the Ohio Supreme
Court. How the wrong man got so close to being executed is instructive about
the flaws in Ohio's death penalty process.

In a Sept. 4 Dayton Daily News commentary, Dayton Daily News Staff Writer
Mark Fisher recalled how he covered Mr. Johnston's 1984 trial and was
stunned by the outcome.

Suspicion fell on Mr. Johnston quickly after his stepdaughter Annette Cooper
and her fiance Todd Schultz disappeared and turned up dead 10 days later.
The rumor was that Mr. Johnston had had sexual contact with Ms. Cooper and
was jealous of her relationship with Mr. Schultz. He was arrested and
charged with their murders.

But from the trial's start, Mr. Fisher wrote, it was apparent prosecutors
did not have a strong case. Even so, there was intense community pressure
for a guilty verdict.

In the end, those inside the courtroom who had watched the trial stared in
shock when a three-judge panel convicted Mr. Johnston. Outside, a large
crowd listening on a radio exploded with a hauntingly satisfied roar,
briefly interrupting the proceedings.

After the conviction was overturned, prosecutors had the opportunity to
charge Mr. Johnston again, but decided not to do so.

Ohio's history with the death penalty dates to the 1800s. No state outside
of the South has executed more people. In 1972, the U.S. Supreme Court
declared Ohio's death penalty law unconstitutional, but executions started
up again in 1999 under a new law with new procedures.

Across the nation, DNA evidence has forced Americans to rethink the death
penalty, and support for it is sinking in public opinion polls as a growing
number of Death Row defendants are freed by new scientific evidence.

Last year, the American Bar Association reviewed Ohio's death penalty
procedures and raised alarms, citing this as one of five states where
processes were most seriously flawed. Since 1973, five Ohio Death Row
inmates have been exonerated, and the danger remains strong that more
mistakes could be made. But there has been no serious effort to institute
better safeguards.

The bar association found that a mixture of simple and complicated steps
could do much to protect the innocent. On the simple side, it called for
rules requiring biological evidence to be kept as long as a defendant is
jailed and mandating videotaped witness interviews for capital cases. Both
of these changes could make cases easier to re-evaluate if doubts are raised
or new scientific methods become the norm.

The nation is moving in the right direction on the death penalty. DNA
evidence has caused both the public and many who work in the courts and in
law enforcement to reconsider the death penalty itself.

On one point there is unanimous sentiment: Innocent people should not die.
Ohio must take steps to ensure tragic mistakes don't ever happen.

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