The Ohio Parole Board recent­ly rec­om­mend­ed clemen­cy for death row inmate Richard Nields, who was sen­tenced to death for killing his live-in girl­friend dur­ing an argu­ment in 1997. The board ques­tioned the valid­i­ty of med­ical evi­dence used at tri­al that helped sup­port the death sen­tence. Testimony pro­vid­ed by a doc­tor-in-train­ing indi­cat­ed the vic­tim had been beat­en and stran­gled. However, the deputy coro­ner and super­vi­sor of the trainee told the parole board there was no sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence to indi­cate when the vic­tim had received those bruis­es. The board also cit­ed con­cerns by the U.S. Court of Appeals that the death sen­tence bare­ly fit the def­i­n­i­tion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment under Ohio’s law, and sim­i­lar con­cerns from a dis­sent­ing judge on the state Supreme Court. Justice Paul Pfeifer, who helped draft Ohio’s death penal­ty as a state leg­is­la­tor in 1981, wrote that Nields’s crime was not what law­mak­ers con­sid­ered a death eli­gi­ble case when the law was cre­at­ed. Gov. Ted Strickland will make the final deci­sion on clemency.

(“Ohio board votes for mer­cy for inmate”, Associated Press, May 18, 2010). See Clemency and Arbitrariness.

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