Ohio Governor Spares the Life of Death Row Inmate

On June 4, Ohio Governor Ted Strickland grant­ed clemen­cy to Richard Nields, reduc­ing his death sen­tence to life with­out parole. Nields was sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed lat­er in June for the 1997 mur­der of his girl­friend in sub­ur­ban Cincinnati. In May, the Ohio Parole Board rec­om­mend­ed Nields for clemen­cy because of prob­lems with med­ical tes­ti­mo­ny at Nields’s tri­al. Dr. Paul Shrode, who was still in train­ing at the time of the tri­al, tes­ti­fied that bruis­ing on the vic­tim proved that Nields stran­gled her. Another doc­tor tes­ti­fied lat­er that there was no sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence to sup­port Shrode’s tes­ti­mo­ny. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit also said his death sen­tence bare­ly fit the def­i­n­i­tion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment under Ohio law. Federal pub­lic defend­er Carol Wright said of the case, ​”A death sen­tence should be reserved for the worst of the worst cas­es. The facts of Richard’s case were nev­er the worst of the worst.” Dr. Schrode was recent­ly dis­missed as the chief med­ical exmain­er in El Paso County, Texas, after dis­crep­an­cies were found in his resume and rev­e­la­tions were made about his unsup­port­ed evi­dence in the Ohio case.

(“Ohio Governor Grants Clemency to Condemned Killer,” Associated Press, June 4, 2010). See Clemency and Arbitrariness. This is the sec­ond clemen­cy grant­ed in 2010; only one clemen­cy was grant­ed in 2009.