Exonerated death row inmate can sue Ohio: state supreme court

Dale Johnston, 82,spent six years on Ohio death row for a double murder he
did not commit.

An Ohio man who spent six years on death row for a double murder he did not commit can pursue a wrongful imprisonment lawsuit against the state, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday.

Dale Johnston, 82, was found guilty in 1984 of murdering his stepdaughter and her fiance and sent to death row where he remained until his conviction was overturned in 1990.

He was released from prison after a court granted a motion to suppress his initial police interrogation and a series of rulings found that prosecutors failed to disclose key evidence and that testimony from a hypnotized witness was inadmissible.

Johnston sued Ohio for wrongful imprisonment in 1993, but a court ruled he had not proven he did not commit the murders.

After police reopened the case in 2008, Chester McKnight pleaded guilty to the murders and three years later Johnston won in a second wrongful imprisonment lawsuit against the state.

An appeals court overturned Johnston's victory, finding that a state law amendment in 2003 that allows for procedural errors to be taken into account in wrongful imprisonment cases did not apply retroactively. He appealed to the state's top court.

In an unanimous ruling on Wednesday, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled that the state law change should have been applied retroactively, reversing the appeals court decision and sending the case back to the trial court.

Johnston's lawyer could not be reached immediately for comment.

The Ohio Attorney General's Office will challenge the case at the trial court because it believes the lawsuit falls outside the statute of limitations and should not be allowed after the first one failed, spokesman Dan Tierney said.

Source: Reuters, Brendan O'Brien, October 29, 2015

Ohio: Former death row inmate urges repeal of ultimate penalty

Joe D'Ambrosio: “If this can happen to me, it can happen to you.”

Death row inmate Joe D’Ambrosio articulated Wednesday in personal terms how it felt to be exonerated of murder after decades behind bars.

“It was surreal,” he said. “It truly is because you dream of that day. They had my body but not my mind.”

D’Ambrosio, who resided more than 20 years in an Ohio prison on a capital conviction before he was freed in 2012, said he was falsely accused and the victim of perjury by a killer angling for a plea bargain. Surviving captivity led D’Ambrosio to participate in the Witness to Innocence organization and contribute to campaigns to repeal the death penalty.

“If this can happen to me, it can happen to you,” the U.S. military veteran said. “I have to put a stop to it. I think that’s why God saved me.”

He said court-appointed legal representation at his murder trial, which set a record for brevity at less than three days, was inadequate. He expected to benefit from a Cleveland public defender on the order of television’s Perry Mason, but “what I ended up having was Barney Fife.”

He spoke of his legal nightmare to a group at Washburn University. The event was sponsored by the Kansas Coalition Against the Death Penalty and Ichtus Campus Ministry.

In September 1988, a jogger found the body of a teen in a Cleveland creek whose throat was slashed and chest stabbed. D’Ambrosio was among three men charged with murder.

One defendant pleaded guilty, received a 15-year sentence and testified against D’Ambrosio and the third suspect, who separately were convicted and sentenced to death.

D’Ambrosio said he was at home asleep during the slaying. A priest with legal and medical training who visited death row inmates agreed to look into his case, and his diverse training enabled him to detect irregularities in the case.

“It’s God sent and not luck,” D’Ambrosio said. “He had to be the priest. He had to be the attorney. He had to be the registered nurse.”

In a 2004 appeal, D’Ambrosio’s attorneys uncovered a trove of information hidden at trial. His conviction was vacated in 2006, and he was released after the state didn’t proceed with a new trial.

Appellate court decisions in 2011 and 2012 precluded renewed prosecution of D’Ambrosio.

Source: CJ Online, Tim Carpenter, October 29, 2015

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Spared execution eight times, oldest inmate in US dies at 101 after 76 years behind bars

Francis Clifford Smith was given his last meal eight times. But after being spared execution each time, he went on to be regarded as the longest-serving prisoner in the US before dying in June at 101 years old. Convicted of murder in 1950 when he was 25, he always maintained his innocence, those who knew him told the BBC. Andrius Banevicius, the public information officer for Connecticut's Department of Correction, recounted how Smith used to feed the birds while in Osborn Prison, earning him the nickname The Birdman of Osborn.

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Hanging of Osaka Arsonist is Japan’s First Execution Under Takaichi Government

As a majority of the international community has abolished capital punishment. Japan and the U.S. are the only two countries in the Group of Seven leading industrialized nations that put people to death. The execution of Takami Sunao—an arsonist whose 2009 attack in Osaka killed five—on August 21, 2026, was Japan’s first use of capital punishment in just over a year. Over a Decade from Sentencing to Execution Takami Sunao was executed on August 21, 2026 , for a 2009 arson attack at an Osaka pachinko parlor that killed five people. In July 2009, Takami poured gasoline on the floor of a pachinko parlor in Osaka and set it alight, killing 5 customers and staff members and injuring 10 more. While the defense argued that he was in a state of diminished capacity, the Supreme Court finalized his death sentence in February 2016. The execution took place 17 years after the initial crime and 10 and a half years after the death sentence was finalized.

Japan executes man convicted of killing five in 2009 Osaka pachinko parlor arson

Japan on Friday announced the execution of a man convicted of killing five people after setting fire to an Osaka pachinko parlor in 2009, the first execution by Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi 's government as the country faces growing calls for more transparency and the abolition of capital punishment. The Justice Ministry said Sunao Takami, 58, was hanged to death earlier Friday. Takami in 2009 set fire to the crowded pachinko parlor in Osaka by spreading gasoline and throwing a lit match, engulfing the building, killing five and injuring 10 others, Justice Minister Hiroshi Hiraguchi said.

Israel builds execution chamber for Palestinians convicted of murder

In March, the Knesset approved legislation that calls for the execution of Palestinians convicted by a military court of killing Israelis Israeli authorities are preparing a prison wing—replete with an execution chamber—designated specifically for Palestinian prisoners convicted of murder, Israel’s i24NEWS channel reported Tuesday. The move comes after the Knesset (Israel’s parliament) approved legislation in March that calls for the execution of Palestinian prisoners convicted by a military court of murdering Israelis.

Florida executes William Frances Silvia

Florida executed its 13th death row prisoner of the year Tuesday evening amid the state’s aggressive use of the death penalty championed by Governor Ron DeSantis. William Frances Silvia, 61, who was convicted of fatally shooting his estranged wife and injuring his mother-in-law in 2006, was pronounced dead at 6:11 p.m. after receiving the lethal three-drug injection at Florida State Prison. At 6 p.m. Tuesday, Silvia was already strapped to a gurney with an IV in his arm when the curtain to the death chamber went up. He remained relatively motionless with his eyes and mouth open throughout most of the execution while a priest sat at his feet and prayed.

Israel’s Ben-Gvir posts video of gallows site for hanging Palestinian terrorists

Israel’s national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, has posted a video of the construction of a gallows complex where Palestinians convicted of terror offenses will be hanged. Ben-Givr said the new execution site would be equipped with viewing booths for families of victims to watch the hangings. He posted the video on social media of a visit he had made to the unidentified location, where he can be seen pointing at foundations being laid and saying it was where “terrorists will be executed." Photographs in the Israeli media showed a bulldozer and heavy construction work in a cordoned-off area, reportedly close to a prison.

Alabama is trying a death penalty bait-and-switch

For a decade, Alabama death row inmate Jeffrey Lee has been clear that he does not want to be executed by lethal injection . But that is what awaits him on September 17 . He faces that prospect because the state has been enjoined from using nitrogen hypoxia , the alternative execution method he preferred, to put him to death. Having failed to show that its nitrogen hypoxia protocol is constitutionally acceptable, Alabama wants a do-over to force Lee to die by lethal injection as a result of its own failure. It should not get one. Alabama should only be able to put Lee to death if it can fix nitrogen hypoxia’s constitutional defects.

Tennessee | The doctor who helps put prisoners to death

Dr. Mark Fowler assisted in the failed execution of a Tennessee prisoner. Physicians are meant to heal patients—why is he working in the death chamber? Mark Fowler, a physician with 25 years’ experience, stepped beneath the bright lights and approached the middle-aged man lying on a gurney. Around him, people in medical gowns prepared needles and sterile tubing. It had all the appearances of a hospital setting. Fowler had been called in to help establish an IV line through which the 57-year-old man, Tony Carruthers, would be injected with pharmaceutical drugs. The team had struggled to find a vein, so Fowler was summoned to set a central line—an intravenous catheter inserted into the major vein below the collarbone.

Oklahoma executes Carlos Cuesta-Rodriguez

Oklahoma has carried out 1 of 3 executions set for the same day in the United States in another sign of the resurgence of the death penalty in the country. Carlos Cuesta-Rodriguez was pronounced dead at 10:13 a.m. on Thursday, Aug. 13, at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester. He was put to death by lethal injection for the murder of his common-law wife in 2003 at their Oklahoma City home. He admitted to police he shot her twice during an argument. Cuesta-Rodriguez, 70, did not fight for his life, stunning his attorneys in July when he told the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board that he didn't want clemency. "It's time for me to pay for what I did," he said.

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