System is too flawed to allow executions

When Ohio resumed executions last July, I joined with other exonerated Ohio death-row survivors to warn Gov. John Kasich that it was only a matter of time before we’d risk executing a prisoner who might be innocent. And now William T. Montgomery is scheduled to be killed on April 11, despite rising doubts about his guilt.

I know a little about situations like this; I lived it. In 1989 I was convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of Tony Klann. I was charged with two other men, Michael Keenan and Ed Espinoza. My sentence was based on testimony from Espinoza that he gave in exchange for a 12-year sentence while I got death.

Montgomery was convicted and sentenced to death in 1986 for the murders of Cynthia Tincher and Debra Ogle. His conviction also was handed down solely on the testimony of the state’s star witness and co-defendant Glover Heard, whose story changed five different times before he settled on what was said at trial.

Only on the fifth time did Heard mention Montgomery as the murderer. And by the way, Heard was sentenced to 15 years to life, not death, for cooperating.

It doesn’t take an expert to see that Montgomery’s case has all the hallmarks of a wrongful conviction:

Prosecutors withheld evidence

A jailhouse informant gave information in exchange for leniency

A co-defendant received a plea deal to testify

The victims’ belongings were found in co-defendant’s possession

Investigators tainted witness accounts

Forensic evidence now disproves the state’s theory.

Montgomery is scheduled to be executed by the state of Ohio, but there is too much doubt surrounding his conviction. I would know — he and I have a lot in common.

During my trial, prosecutors withheld ten pieces of evidence that could have proved my innocence. No physical evidence ever tied me or Montgomery to the crimes we were accused of, and we both were victim to Brady violations, in which evidence that could have helped defend us was hidden by prosecutors.

In Montgomery’s case, the state suppressed evidence that several witnesses, specifically school classmates, saw Ogle alive four days after she allegedly was murdered. Not until six years after Montgomery’s sentence was this information brought to light from a public-records request, and that evidence has never been heard in open court.

Several pieces of physical evidence, such as Glover Heard’s shoes and Tincher’s diary, were lost or destroyed during the trial. They could have helped uncover the truth.

Ohio has executed 55 people since 1999. I am one of nine people exonerated from Ohio’s death row with evidence of innocence. On average, we spent 21 years wrongly imprisoned. Combined, we served 190 years incarcerated for crimes we did not commit. The National Academy of Science found that, statistically, 1 in every 25 men currently on death row is innocent.

In 2006, a federal judge in my case ruled that prosecutors had not turned over evidence that could have led the three-judge panel to find me not guilty. My conviction was thrown out, and after several long years of battling the state and more appeals, on Jan. 23, 2013, I became the 140th death-row exoneree and the sixth from Ohio.

When execution is the result, the system must be perfect 100 percent of the time. The facts above, and the obvious mistakes in my and Montgomery’s cases, show that the system is far from perfect.

Ohio legislators have had opportunities to put protections in place to correct the problem of wrongful convictions. Though an Ohio Supreme Court task force in 2014 made more than a dozen recommendations which could help prevent wrongful convictions, none of these particular reforms has been acted upon by state lawmakers. This means there’s plenty of opportunity for wrongful convictions to continue and it’s business as usual.

I don’t know who killed Cynthia Tincher and Debra Ogle, but I do know there is way too much doubt to execute William Montgomery for it. Based on the obvious wrongdoings in this case, I pray Governor Kasich commutes Montgomery’s sentence and remembers that when the state executes an innocent person, the mistake is irreversible. murder