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Letter from John Spirko's Attorney To Gary Croft Of The Ohio Parole Board Regarding Pritchard's Lies. ----- Forwarded by Alvin Dunn/SPPT/US on 08/27/2005 10:13 PM -----
08/27/2005
To: gary.croft@odrc.state.oh.us Dear Mr. Croft: First, let me apologize for the informal means of this communication, but I wanted to get this to you as soon as possible given the deadline under which you are operating. On behalf of Mr. Spirko, we certainly share in the concerns expressed in the attached article from the Plain Dealer reflecting numerous significant misrepresentations made by the Attorney General's Office at the hearing on Tuesday. In these matters, which are quite literally issues of life and death, it is imperative that all parties present truthful and accurate information and not guess or speculate or assert as fact things that simply did not happen. Unfortunately, the Attorney General's Office was not so careful and accurate in its presentation to the Board. I was quite stunned to read that Mr. Pritchard attributed his misrepresentations to his not being aware of the facts. The facts here are complicated, and if Mr. Pritchard was unaware of facts, he should not have speculated and represented as fact, things that turn out to be fiction. It was next to impossible in a 5 minute summation to counter the many misstatements by the Attorney General in their nearly 3 hour presentation. The Plain Dealer article does a fine job of exposing some of these important misrepresentations. In addition to the fact that there was no evidence whatsoever to suggest that Mr. Spirko did not have a scheduled appointment with Mr. Lohmeyer, I can represent to the Board that it was reported in the press in 1984 that although Mr. Lohmeyer did not have a specific recollection of the time of the day on August 9, 1982 that he met with Mr. Spirko, his normal practice when meeting with a new parolee was to meet in the morning; and Mr. Lohmeyer did testify that he met with Mr. Spirko for as long as an hour and a half and that he typically left the office between 4:30 and 4:45. You will recall that phone records establish that Mr. Spirko was at his sister's home, 30 miles away as late as 2:18. I would also point out, that in addition to the other misrepresentations addressed in the Plain Dealer article, Mr. Wille suggested to the Board that Spirko's trial counsel were aware of the Gibson alibi because of their receipt of memoranda of interviews conducted with Margie Gibson upon her husband's first arrest in April, 1983. This is false. There is not one mention in any of those memoranda about anything having to do with the Mottinger case; it appears she was interviewed generally about her fugitive husband with no mention of Mottinger of August 9. Indeed, any defense lawyer receiving those memos would have to conclude that Mrs. Gibson had no relevant information to offer. It was the subsequent investigative memoranda of interviews with her in January, 1984, by Paul Hartman, which were concealed from the defense and which indicated that Margie and Delaney Gibson had spent the weekend of August 7 and 8 with Margie Bentley and had given Mr. Hartman photographs taken that weekend, as well as a receipt of an automotive part sold to Delaney Gibson on August 7. Mr. Pritchard's suggestion to the Board that the April 1983 memos put defense counsel on notice of anything is false and misleading. I am attaching a link to the Plain Dealer article and the full text is pasted into the attached Word document. Please accept this as part of the record. I submit that the danger for misstatements and misrepresentations in this complex matter is yet another reason why the Board should be very careful that any final recommendation is based on as full, complete and accurate a record as possible and shoud allow Chief Judge Carr and the Sixth Circuit the consideration and flexibility they desire in developing a complete record. Sincerely,
Thomas Hill
The Cleveland Plain Dealer article is available at this link:
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