Ohio Supreme Court turns down appeal
Compensation denied for wrongful imprisonment.
Dale Johnston COLUMBUS — is not legally entitled to a cent in compensation for serving nearly seven years on death row for a pair of horrific murders he did not commit.
The Ohio Supreme Court on Wednesday refused to accept Johnston’s latest appeal in a decades-long fight to win legal recognition of his innocence. Asked if he expects to ever win, Johnston said, “I doubt it ... you kind of get used to it.”
Johnston, 83, who now lives in Grove City, was convicted of the 1982 murders of his stepdaughter and her fiance in Hocking County. He was sentenced to die in the electric chair, but his conviction was overturned on appeal in 1990 due to prosecutorial misconduct and the withholding of evidence that cast doubt on his guilt.
The true killer, Chester McKnight, confessed in 2008 to the slayings of Annette Cooper, 18, and Todd Schultz, 19, and was sentenced to life imprisonment. McKnight shot both of them and, with help from another man, carved up their bodies. The heads and limbs were buried in a cornfield and their torsos were thrown into the Hocking River. While the Supreme Court ruled in 2015 that Johnston could pursue his wrongful-imprisonment claim, a decision by the justices in another in another case a few weeks later proved to derail his quest. The Franklin County Court of Appeals ruled nearly a year ago that Johnston was not entitled to pursue wrongful-imprisonment damages. The court cited the Supreme Court ruling subsequent to the Johnston case. The ruling, which held an innocence claim could only be pursued if the errors in the case occurred after sentencing or imprisonment, led the appeals court to conclude that Johnston could not sue the state. The misconduct that sent Johnston to prison occurred during his trial.
“It may be safe to say that no reasonable person in the history of mankind would or could review the facts surrounding these gruesome homicides and think anything other than Dale Johnston is and was an innocent man victimized by an overzealous application of Ohio’s criminal justice system,” wrote his lawyer, Charles Koenig of Columbus, in an appeal filed last fall. Koenig classified the case as “the single most wrongful conviction and imprisonment in Ohio’s history.” Johnston may have one last hope. The state budget contains a provision to reverse what some lawmakers denounce as the Ohio’s narrowing of compensation laws for wrongful imprisonment. Its passage could permit Johnston to assert a new claim for damages.