Tyrone Noling (pic­tured) is an inmate on Ohio​’s death row whose guilt has been called into doubt by a lack of phys­i­cal evi­dence, recant­i­ng wit­ness­es and refusal by the state to con­duct a DNA test. Andrew Cohen, writ­ing in a recent issue of The Atlantic, com­pared Noling’s case to that of Troy Davis, who was exe­cut­ed in Georgia in 2011, despite doubts about his guilt. Noling was con­vict­ed of the 1990 mur­ders of an elder­ly cou­ple in their home. Initially, there was no phys­i­cal evi­dence link­ing him to the crime, and no wit­ness­es against him. When an aggres­sive inves­ti­ga­tor took over the case, some wit­ness­es began giv­ing state­ments against Noling. Cohen reports that all of these wit­ness­es have since recant­ed their state­ments, claim­ing they were pres­sured by the pros­e­cu­tor. In 2009, 13 years after the orig­i­nal tri­al, pros­e­cu­tors pro­vid­ed defense attor­neys with hand­writ­ten police notes from the inves­ti­ga­tions in 1990 in which a wit­ness iden­ti­fied anoth­er man as hav­ing com­mit­ted the mur­ders. The state is cur­rent­ly refus­ing DNA test­ing of evi­dence col­lect­ed from the crime scene that might place this man at the scene of the crime.

While deny­ing relief part­ly because of restric­tions imposed on fed­er­al habeas cor­pus, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit expressed seri­ous con­cerns about Noling’s conviction:

Nevertheless, we pause for a moment to high­light our con­cern about Noling’s death sen­tence in light of ques­tions raised regard­ing his pros­e­cu­tion. Noling was not indict­ed until five years after the Hartigs’ mur­ders when a new local pros­e­cu­tor took office. That new pros­e­cu­tor pur­sued the cold mur­der case with sus­pi­cious vig­or accord­ing to Noling’s accusers, who have since recant­ed their sto­ries and now claim that they only iden­ti­fied Noling as the mur­der­er in the first place because they were threat­ened by the pros­e­cu­tor. In addi­tion to the iden­ti­fi­ca­tions being poten­tial­ly coerced, there is absolute­ly no phys­i­cal evi­dence link­ing Noling to the mur­ders, and there are oth­er viable sus­pects that the pros­e­cu­tor chose not to inves­ti­gate or did not know of at the time.

…

As long as our jus­tice sys­tem depends on men and women to make deci­sions, it will invari­ably make mis­takes. We know not whether it has made one here where Ohio sends Noling to his final reck­on­ing, but our duty requires us to sober­ly affirm the dis­trict court where no con­sti­tu­tion­al error occurred as to war­rant habeas relief.

(Noling v. Bradshaw, No. 07 – 3989, 6th Cir., June 29, 2011).

Noling is await­ing a deci­sion from the Ohio Supreme Court regard­ing test­ing of mate­ri­als col­lect­ed from the crime scene for DNA evidence.

(A. Cohen, ​“Is Ohio Keeping Another Innocent Man on Death Row?” The Atlantic, January 31, 2012). See Innocence. Joe D’Ambrosio was recent­ly exon­er­at­ed from death row in Ohio after the pros­e­cu­tion had with­held crit­i­cal evi­dence from the defense.

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