Former Portage County Sheriff Says Tyrone Noling is Innocent and Should Be Pardoned, Citing ‘Egregious’ Official Misconduct

In a September 17, 2026 op-ed, P. Ken Howe — who served as sheriff of Portage County, Ohio from 1989 to 1993 and was present at the crime scene — called on Governor Mike DeWine to grant a full pardon to Tyrone Noling, who has spent three decades on death row after being convicted of the 1990 murders of Cora and Bernhardt Harting. Mr. Noling has always maintained his innocence. Mr. Howe’s public request follows an August 25 decision from the Ohio Parole Board recommending that Gov. DeWine grant Mr. Noling clemency. Of the board members who reviewed the case, one recommended a full pardon while five others recommended parole eligibility in 2029.

Mr. Howe argues that the case against Mr. Noling was built on coerced testimony from teenage codefendants, all of whom have since recanted, and described the pressure tactics used against them. No physical evidence ever tied Mr. Noling to the crime scene, and Mr. Howe points to withheld exculpatory evidence and a juror who has since expressed fear that she helped convict an innocent man.

Central to Mr. Howe’s case for Mr. Noling’s innocence is an alternative, uninvestigated suspect: Dan Wilson, who lived in a foster home near the victims and allegedly confessed to his foster brother that he, not Mr. Noling, committed the murders. According to Mr. Howe, DNA from a cigarette butt found at the scene excludes Mr. Noling as a contributor, but does not exclude Mr. Wilson, who was later executed by the state of Ohio for a separate 1991 murder.

Mr. Howe’s op-ed frames the case as a broader indictment of the harms of wrongful convictions, noting that when the wrong person is punished, a guilty party escapes accountability and remains a public danger. He urges Gov. DeWine to act before Mr. Noling’s clemency application runs out the clock on what he describes as a 30-year miscarriage of justice. Gov. DeWine has several choices: he can accept the board’s recommendation, grant him a full pardon, reduce Mr. Noling’s sentence to a term of years, or reject the recommendation and leave Mr. Noling’s death sentence in place.

Mr. Noling’s August 18 clemency hearing was the first clemency hearing granted to an Ohio death row prisoner since 2020 and is particularly notable because death-sentenced prisoners do not typically receive clemency hearings until an execution date is set. In June 2026, Gov. DeWine issued his first grant of clemency in a death penalty case, reducing Gregory Lott’s death sentence to life without parole. Mr. Lott was sentenced to death in 1987, and in 2020, the Ohio Parole Board recommended clemency by a 6 – 2 vote.