Kasich cuts killer’s death sentence to life
OhioGov. John COLUMBUS—
Kasich on Friday spared a condemnedkillerwhose sentence was challenged after a juror came forward and said information about the extent of the inmate’s tough childhood wasn’t properly presented at trial.
The Republican governor commuted the sentence of death rowinmate Raymond Tibbetts to life without the possibility of parole, citing “fundamental flflaws” in the sentencing portion of Tibbetts’ trial.
“Specififically, the defense’s failure to present suffifficient mitigating evidence, coupled with an inaccurate description of Tibbetts’ childhood by the prosecution, essentially prevented the jury from making an informed decision aboutwhether Tibbetts deserved the deathsentence,” Kasich said.
The guilt of Tibbetts, 61, has never been in doubt. He received the death sentence for stabbing Fred Hicks to death at Hicks’ Cincinnati home in 1997. Tibbetts also received life imprisonment for fatally beating and stabbing his wife, 42-year-old Judith Crawford, during an argument thatsame dayover Tibbetts’ crackcocainehabit.
The 67-year-oldHicks had hired Crawford as a caretaker and allowed the couple to stay with him.
The case against Hicks seemed closed until a former juror, RossGeiger, came across materials presented on Tibbetts’ behalf to the Ohio Parole Board that documentedhorrifific facts about Tibbetts’ early years, which jurors never heard.
When Tibbetts was a boy, he and his brothers were tied to a single bed at night, were not fed properly, were throwndownstairs, hadtheir fifingers beatenwith spatulas and were burned on heating registers, according to Tibbetts’ application formercy last year.
Geiger wrote Kasich in January citing his concerns and asking that Tibbetts be spared. He also testified before the parole board last month in a rare follow-up clemencyhearing. Theboard had voted 11-1 against mercy for Tibbetts last year.
Geiger told the board that Tibbetts’upbringingwas presented as a debate between his attorneys, who said his background was terrible, and prosecutors, who said it wasn’t that bad.
“I was just struck and frankly upset that information that was available was not even addressed, other than in very summary fashion,” Geiger told the board.
Geiger’s comments didn’t sway the panel, which again recommendedagainstmercy for Tibbettswith an 8-1 vote.
Kasich’s decision Friday rejected that ruling.
County prosecutors have previously argued that Tibbetts’ background does not outweigh his crimes. That includes stabbing Crawford after he had already beaten her to death, and then repeatedly stabbing Hicks, a “sick, defenseless, hearing-impaired man in whosehome Tibbetts lived,” they told the parole board.