Ohio Governor Commutes Death Sentence of William Montgomery

Ohio Governor John Kasich has com­mut­ed the death sen­tence of 52-year-old William Montgomery (pic­tured) to life with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole. Montgomery was sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed on April 11. The one-page procla­ma­tion grant­i­ng clemen­cy (pic­tured right, click to enlarge) did not spec­i­fy the grounds for Kasich’s action and was not accom­pa­nied by a news release or state­ment to the media. The order, issued March 26, stat­ed sim­ply, ​“after con­sid­er­a­tion of all rel­e­vant fac­tors, I … have con­clud­ed that a com­mu­ta­tion of the death sen­tence of William T. Montgomery is warranted.” 

Faced with issues of pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct and ques­tion­able foren­sic evi­dence, the Ohio Parole Board vot­ed 6 – 4 on March 16, 2018 to rec­om­mend that Kasich grant exec­u­tive clemen­cy to Montgomery, who was con­vict­ed and sen­tence to death in 1986 for two mur­ders he main­tains he did not com­mit. Lucas County Prosecutor Julia Bates opposed Montgomery’s clemency application. 

An Ohio fed­er­al dis­trict court, affirmed by a fed­er­al appeals court pan­el, over­turned Montgomery’s con­vic­tion in 2007 because pros­e­cu­tors had sup­pressed evi­dence and wit­ness state­ments that under­mined the state’s ver­sion of how the crime occurred, but the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit rein­stat­ed the con­vic­tion in 2009, with five judges dis­sent­ing. Montgomery’s sup­port­ers argued to the parole board that there was too much doubt about his guilt to risk exe­cut­ing a poten­tial­ly innocent man. 

Prosecutors in the case with­held from the defense evi­dence that mul­ti­ple wit­ness­es had seen Debra Ogle, one of the women Montomgery was found guilty of mur­der­ing, alive four days after the date pros­e­cu­tors said Montgomery had killed her and left her body in the woods. An inde­pen­dent review of the autop­sy report showed that Ogle’s body like­ly had been dis­cov­ered with­in hours of her death. Adding to the doubt in the case, Montgomery’s co-defen­dant, Glover Heard, told police five dif­fer­ent sto­ries before set­tling on a ver­sion of events that fit the pros­e­cu­tion’s the­o­ry, and instead of fac­ing the death penal­ty, he was sen­tenced to a term of years with eli­gi­bil­i­ty for parole. 

The clemen­cy grant was the sixth time Kasich had com­mut­ed a death sen­tence to life with­out parole. It was the sec­ond time a gov­er­nor com­mut­ed a death sen­tence in 2018. Texas Governor Greg Abbott com­mut­ed Thomas ​“Bart” Whitaker’s sen­tence on February 22, less than an hour before he was sched­uled to be executed. 

There have been 287 grants of clemen­cy to death-row pris­on­ers in the United States on human­i­tar­i­an grounds since 1976. Ohio gov­er­nors have grant­ed clemen­cy to death-row pris­on­ers twen­ty times in that time peri­od.