Ohio | Death row inmate to now serve life in prison for 2001 murders

A Columbus man who has been on death row since his 2020 conviction on two murder charges will now serve life in prison under a 2021 Ohio law forbidding the execution of people who were severely mentally ill at the time of their offense.

Michael R. Turner, 64, was sentenced to death for the June 12, 2001, killing of his estranged wife, Jennifer Lyles Turner, and her boyfriend, Ronald Seggerman, at her Reynoldsburg apartment. A three-judge panel sentenced Turner to death after he pleaded guilty in 2002 to two counts of aggravated murder with death-penalty specifications.

Last year, Turner filed a petition stating he was ineligible for execution and included an affidavit from a psychiatrist who found him to be mentally ill at the time he committed the murders. A psychiatrist hired by the court to give a second opinion agreed with the first.

"Given the two experts’ agreement and the lack of viable, factual reasons to oppose Turner’s petition, the prosecutor’s office did not oppose removing Turner from death row and being sentenced to life in prison without parole," the Franklin County Prosecutor's Office said in a release.

The prosecutor's office discussed the situation with families of both victims. But under the 2021 state law, any offender not eligible to be executed due to mental illness instead is resentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole.

Turner is currently incarcerated in Chillicothe Correctional Institution, according to Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction records.

While Ohio has no official moratorium on executions, the state has not executed any death row inmates since 2018. Many recent executions have been postponed as the state struggles to acquire the drugs used in lethal injections.

Turner has a lengthy criminal history dating back to a 1980 conviction for attempted murder when he used a letter opener to attack a deputy sheriff in Virginia who was transporting him for a polygraph test and tried to grab the deputy's gun. Turner pleaded guilty to attempted murder, but was paroled after only five years of his 15-year sentence. He violated parole and wound up back in prison, court records show.

Upon release, Turner divorced his first wife and married Jennifer Lyles in January 2000 in Bassett, Virginia. But Turner immediately began abusing Lyles, who on the advice of her mother fled in September 2000 to live in the Columbus area, court records show.

Lyles gave Turner a second chance in December 2000 and let him move back in with her, but he began abusing her again — choking her nearly unconscious once — and she filed police complaints and obtained a temporary protection order against him. He ultimately pleaded guilty on May 18, 2001, to misdemeanor domestic violence and got probation.

After that, Turner indicated to multiple people he intended to kill his estranged wife, and weeks later attacked and stabbed her and Seggerman multiple times. They both later died while undergoing emergency surgery.

Source: dispatch.com, Bailey Gallion, October 25, 2023

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