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INTRODUCTION AND SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT
John Spirko has been on Ohio's death row for the past 22 years for a crime he did not commit. He was convicted because his trial was Constitionally and fundamentally flawed: the State failed to disclose exculpatory material demonstrating the the case it presented to the jury was false and that the State knew it was false. As Judge Gilman concluded in the dissent, "it leaves me with considerable doubt as to whether [Spirko] has been lawfully subjected to the death penalty in light of the state's alleged Brady violation." Spirko v. Mitchell, 368 F.d 603, 614 (6th Cir. 2004) (emphasis added) (attached hereto as Exhibit 1). In September 1983, the State indicted both Mr. Spirko and Delaney Gibson for the 1982 kidnapping and murder of Betty Jane Mottinger. In August 1984, the State tried Mr. Spirko alone (Mr. Gibson was at large at the time), but it presented a case that Mr. Spirko and Mr. Gibson committed the crime together. The State offered no physical evidence linking either Mr. Spirko or Mr. Gibson to the crime. The state relied heavily on Opal Siebert, who lived across the street from the post office where Mrs. Mottinger worked and testified that she was "100% sure" that she saw a clean-shaven Mr. Gibson, identified from a photo spread, in front of the post office shortly before Mrs. Mottinger was kidnapped. Id. at 616. To link Mr.
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