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Postmaster's Killer Loses Death-Row Appeal
May. 19, 2004 CINCINNATI - A prisoner who was convicted of killing a postmaster in 1982 and has been on death row since then, lost a bid for a new hearing Monday in Ohio's longest-standing capital punishment case. The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 against the appeal by John G. Spirko Jr. But a lawyer for Spirko said he was encouraged by the dissent of appeals court Judge Ronald Gilman, who wrote he has "considerable doubt" about whether Spirko was lawfully subjected to the death penalty for the Aug. 9, 1982, killing of Betty Jane Mottinger, postmaster at the Elgin post office in Van Wert County. Spirko has been on death row longer than anyone else in Ohio, prison system official Andrea Dean said Monday. John Callahan, a Sylvania lawyer representing Spirko, said Gilman's dissent could be the basis for the defense to ask the full appeals court to set aside Monday's decision and reconsider the case. Spirko's lawyers contended the state violated his right to a fair trial by not providing all the evidence that could have placed a co-defendant of his in North Carolina at the time of Mottinger's abduction and killing. The defense could have used that evidence at trial to create doubt about the state's accusation that Spirko was there and killed Mottinger, his lawyers argued. "The case against Spirko is far from overwhelming," Gilman wrote. One state witness testified to being "100 percent sure" that Spirko's co-defendant was at the scene when Mottinger was abducted and another witness was "70 percent sure" that Spirko was also there, Gilman wrote. Police said Spirko told them details of the killing the public could not have known, but Gilman wrote that the information "could have come from secondhand repetition rather than firsthand participation." The majority's ruling confirms there was no evidence of injustice against Spirko, said Kim Norris, a spokeswoman for Ohio Attorney General Jim Petro.
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