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Thread: Tyrone L. Noling - Ohio Death Row

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    Tyrone L. Noling - Ohio Death Row


    Cora and Bearnhardt Hartig




    Summary of Offense:

    On April 5, 1990, Noling murdered an 81-year-old couple, Bearnhardt and Cora Hartig, at their home in Atwater Township. The Hartigs were the target of a plan between Noling and his accomplice, Gary St. Clair, to rob elderly people. When Mrs. Hartig opened the door, Noling and St. Clair pushed their way into the house and robbed them. During the robbery, Noling shot Mr. and Mrs. Hartig multiple times at close range.

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    August 25, 2010

    Prosecutor refuses DNA request says request is misleading

    The Portage County prosecutor is refusing a request by the governor and the attorney general for more DNA testing in a death penalty case.

    The Record Courier reports the prosecutor said no to the letter he received from Governor Ted Strickland and Attorney General Richard Cordray requesting more DNA testing on a cigarette butt found at the scene of an elderly couple's murder 20 years ago. The case of Tyrone Noling is one of seven cases profiled by the Ohio Innocence Project and the Columbus Dispatch.

    The governor and attorney general say it would be good public policy to do more testing. The prosecutor says it's "improper or inappropriate" for anyone to interfere with an ongoing court case. Noling's case is the only one of the seven in which the defendant is on death row.

    http://www.wksu.org/news/story/26007

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    On March 10, 2008, Noling filed an appeal in the Sixth Circuit over the denial of his habeas petition in Federal District Court.

    http://dockets.justia.com/docket/cir...s/ca6/08-3258/

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    New assertion in 1990 murder of Portage County couple contradicts conviction of accused killer Tyrone Noling

    RAVENNA, Ohio -- Nathan Chesley went to the Portage County courthouse Friday to put his hand on a Bible and swear that it was his one-time foster brother who murdered an elderly couple 20 years ago -- not Tyrone Noling, the man sitting on death row for the killings.

    "I never met Tyrone -- I don't know nothing about him," Chesley said as he waited in the hallway outside the courtroom of Common Pleas Judge John Enlow. "But I do know that Dan killed the Hartigs -- there is no question."

    Dan is Daniel Wilson, executed by Ohio in 2009 for an entirely different crime -- locking a young woman in a trunk, then burning her alive.

    Local newspapers reported that police investigating the execution-style murder of Bearnhardt and Cora Hartig, shot at close range while sitting at their kitchen table in Atwater Township in April 1990, had looked at Wilson as the possible triggerman. He lived near the victims in a foster home and had a juvenile record of violence against the elderly. But he was dropped as a suspect.

    Chesley now says that was a horrible mistake because his foster brother told him he had killed the Hartigs.

    Chesley never got the chance to testify. Enlow limited the scope of the arguments to two documents that Noling's defense team says the prosecution never turned over: a handwritten police report capturing the words of a young Chesley naming his foster brother as the killer, and a lab report suggesting that Wilson might have smoked a cigarette left in the driveway to the Hartigs' ranch house, the only physical evidence in the case.

    Noling's lawyers say that they discovered those documents only after asking for the records of his two co-defendants and that Noling deserves a new trial. But Portage County prosecutors say those records were available to the court-appointed lawyers who represented Noling during his trial in 1996.

    George Keith, one of Noling's trial attorneys, testified that he didn't think he'd ever seen Chesley's statement implicating his violent foster brother.

    Keith said that if he and his co-counsel had seen such an incendiary statement, "it would have become paramount to our investigation . . . paramount to our defense of Mr. Noling. We would have called the person who said [his] brother did it and then the brother."

    Keith also said he had "no recollection" of seeing the lab report that showed a possible DNA link between Wilson and the cigarette butt from the crime scene. The DNA evidence did not match Noling and his co-defendants.

    Only further testing can reveal whether Wilson is an exact match, tests prosecutors have declined to conduct despite appeals from former Gov. Ted Strickland and former Attorney General Richard Cordray.

    Assistant Prosecuting Attorney Pamela Holder said not only did Noling's lawyers see all the evidence against their client, but also Wilson's name was part of the public record. They could have learned about him "just by reading the papers."

    Noling's lawyers responded that it is the state's burden to provide all relevant information to the defense team, not the job of the media. Additionally, none of the news reports mentioned the words of Wilson's foster brother or the results of the lab tests.

    After three hours of argument and testimony, Enlow said he would issue a written ruling.

    Noling, in the courtroom in government-issued orange-and-white stripes, was a teenager when the Hartigs were murdered. He will turn 39 in March. Convicted in 1996, he has maintained his innocence for more than two decades.

    http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2011..._murder_o.html

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    Questions in death row inmate Tyrone Noling's case deserve answers: Regina Brett

    A cigarette butt could have the power to free a man on death row, but Portage County prosecutors don't want to allow it to be tested.

    Why not?

    It is the only physical evidence left at the scene of a double homicide.

    It could match the DNA of convicted killer Dan Wilson.

    It could mean a new trial for Tyrone Noling who sits on death row for the 1990 murders of Bearnhardt and Cora Hartig. The elderly couple lived in Atwater Township. She was shot five times; he was shot three times.

    Why would a prosecutor not want a new trial?

    Let's start with the physical evidence that links Noling to the crime scene.

    Oh wait, there isn't any.

    Not one fingerprint. Not one speck of DNA. Not the ballistics report. The only evidence left behind was a cigarette butt in a driveway that didn't match Noling's DNA.

    Let's move on to the three men who testified that Noling fired the gun.

    No, we can't use those witnesses. They all lied. They admitted that later in signed affidavits. Two of them had struck plea deals and one was granted immunity in return for testifying against Noling. They all now say Noling is innocent, that they were bullied into testifying for the prosecutor.

    Let's examine the weapon. No, we can't do that either. The gun was never found. A ballistics test proved that a gun Noling used to rob people wasn't the murder weapon.

    Tyrone Noling was no angel back then. He was a gun-toting teenager who broke into homes and robbed people of cash and jewelry. But whoever killed the Hartigs didn't rob them. Cora died with her wedding ring on; Bearnhardt was wearing his watch, had cash in his wallet and $160 in full view.

    Last week Nathan Chesley came to swear on a Bible in a Portage County courthouse that his foster brother, Dan Wilson, had admitted to murdering the Hartigs. Common Pleas Judge John Enlow didn't give Chesley the chance to be heard.

    Wilson should have been examined more closely as a suspect all along. He lived just a mile from the Hartigs and had already killed a man. Wilson once lived next door to Frank Cebula in Elyria. Cebula, like the Hartigs, was 81 when he was a victim of weird break-ins. Once, he found a candle burning in his house. Another time, he found his pet bird drowned.

    Wilson was 14 when he came to Cebula's door wearing a mask in 1984. He demanded money, then beat Cebula and left him to die. Wilson was found guilty of delinquency by reason of involuntary manslaughter. He ended up years later in a foster home not far from the Hartigs.

    A year after the Hartigs were killed, Wilson was the prime suspect in the killing of Rachael Johnson in March of 1991. She was repeatedly raped, stabbed 10 times in the chest, beaten, then set on fire. The Akron case is still unsolved. I wrote a profile on Dan Wilson after he stuffed Carol Lutz into a car trunk and burned her alive in May of 1991. The people I interviewed wondered if he wasn't a serial killer. The state executed Wilson for Lutz's killing in 2009.

    His name came up during the Hartig murder investigation, but defense attorneys say the prosecutors never showed them the police report. In it, a teen (Chelsey) said Wilson admitted he killed the Hartigs. Defense attorneys say they never got a DNA lab report that suggested Wilson could have dropped the cigarette in the Hartigs' driveway. DNA tests on the butt ruled out Noling but not Wilson.

    Prosecutors say those records were available to the defense lawyers during the 1996 trial. Even if that's true, DNA testing has grown much more sophisticated since then. Wilson's DNA is on file with the state. Why not test it?

    Even if defense attorneys had the information and missed it, how is that Noling's fault? The jury that convicted Noling never heard the reasonable doubts that now overshadow his conviction.

    The jury never heard that Dan Wilson was considered a suspect, that he lived a mile away from the crime, that he had already killed a man, that the DNA on the cigarette butt could be his, that a police report existed saying Wilson admitted to his foster brother that he killed the Hartigs.

    It's a simple DNA test.

    But if it matches Dan Wilson's DNA, it's a game-changer.

    No, make that a life-changer.

    http://www.cleveland.com/brett/blog/...w_inmates.html

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    Murderer's request for new trial rejected

    A Portage County Common Pleas Court judge has rejected convicted killer Tyrone L. Noling’s motion for a new trial in the 1990 murder case that put him on death row.

    In a written ruling, Judge John Enlow said that Noling failed to prove he was prevented from discovering evidence prior to his 1995 trial that could have exonerated him on charges he murdered Bearnhardt and Cora Hartig in their home on Moff Road in Atwater on April 5, 1990.

    Noling, 38, and his attorneys had the burden to prove “by clear and convincing evidence that he was unavoidably prevented” from discovering the exculpatory evidence, Enlow ruled.

    Noling’s attorneys from Weil, Gotshal & Manges, a Washington D.C. law firm, and the Ohio Innocence Project at the University of Cincinnati College of Law, argued in a hearing on Feb. 18 that Noling should receive a new trial because the Portage County Prosecutor’s Office withheld evidence that could have exonerated him.

    Noling’s trial attorneys, George Keith and Peter Cahoon, testified during the hearing he believed prosecutors had given them all the evidence they had against Noling at the time. Prosecution witnesses also testified the prosecutor’s office’s files were open to defense attorneys at any time.

    The prosecutor’s office disagreed, and fought the defense motion. Prosecutor Victor Vigluicci also has declined requests by defense attorneys to test DNA on a cigarette butt against an alternate suspect, and has filed an 87-page motion with the court in opposition to Noling’s request for new DNA testing.

    The prosecutor’s office opposes new testing on the cigarette butt found in the Hartigs’ driveway after the murder. The butt did not contain DNA from Noling or any of his three co-defendants, and the defense is asking Enlow to order it tested to show whether a fifth man — since executed for a separate murder — may have killed the couple instead.
    One-time suspect Daniel E. Wilson, a Rootstown High School graduate and former Edinburg resident, was executed for a separate murder in June 2009. Defense attorneys have said investigators focused on him as a potential suspect before moving on to Noling, a known burglar.

    Noling was convicted of the double murder of the Hartigs almost five years after the crime and sentenced to death in January 1996. The .25-caliber handgun used to kill the Hartigs has never been found.

    Noling’s three co-defendants in the burglary and killing — two of whom were sent to prison after pleading guilty to lesser charges and testifying against him, and one who was a juvenile at the time — all have since recanted their statements that Noling was involved.

    http://www.recordpub.com/news/article/5000020

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    Judge won't allow DNA testing of cigarette that might help clear death-row inmate Tyrone Noling

    A cigarette butt sits in a vault at the Portage County Courthouse -- at least that's where it was the last time anybody remembers seeing it.

    Police found it in April 1990 as they swarmed over the Atwater Township ranch house and driveway of Bernhardt and Cora Hartig, an elderly couple shot at point-blank range in their kitchen. Tyrone Noling was convicted of murdering the Hartigs in 1996 and sent to Ohio's death row, where he awaits an execution date.

    Late last year, lawyers for the Ohio Innocence Project asked Judge John Enlow for permission to test the cigarette butt against the DNA profiles of offenders collected in a national database. They believe that test could help exonerate Noling of a crime he says he did not commit.

    This week, the judge said no. It is the second time he has denied a DNA test request on procedural grounds. Last month, Enlow also rejected a motion to allow Noling's team to ask for a new trial based on information that someone else may have pulled the trigger.

    No physical evidence has ever linked Noling to the bloody scene. Police never found his fingerprints at the Hartigs' house. They never recovered a murder weapon. Tests done some two decades ago proved that neither Noling nor his co-defendants smoked the cigarette.

    That's the reason Enlow cited the first time he denied the motion to test the butt against other possible suspects -- Noling has already been ruled out as the smoker, so no need to do another test. Enlow cited the same reason in his second denial.

    But Noling's defense team wants a lab to determine if the cigarette was dropped by someone else, chiefly Daniel Wilson, a killer executed in Ohio in 2009 for locking a young woman in a car trunk, then burning her alive.

    Wilson's foster brother, Nathan Chesley, says Wilson admitted the killings soon after the Hartigs' bodies were discovered. Enlow would not allow Chesley to testify during the hearing when lawyers argued Noling deserved a new trial.

    Carrie Wood, an attorney with the Ohio Innocence Project, thinks Noling's conviction might be reversed if the DNA test established that Wilson, a known felon, had been at the crime scene. "That would change the outcome of the trial, and that's why we were asking for this DNA test," Wood said.

    Wood plans to file an appeal with the Ohio Supreme Court.

    Enlow refused to comment, saying through a spokesperson that "he lets his entries speak for themselves."

    A teenager at the time of the murders, Noling is now 39.

    http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2011...testing_o.html

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    Noling v. Bradshaw

    The 6th Circuit Court of Appeals has AFFIRMED the judgment of the district court and DENIED Noling’s second motion to file a successive petition.

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    Judges worry, but affirm death sentence of Tyrone Noling

    Though two federal judges described his case as "worrisome" and questioned whether the state would be killing an innocent man, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decided to let Tyrone Noling's 1996 death sentence stand.

    The ruling by the Cincinnati-based court Wednesday also bars Noling from presenting new evidence that others might have committed the double murder that put him on Ohio's death row.

    Kelly Schneider, Noling's longtime attorney, called the decision "heartbreaking."

    "Basically, they see problems in Tyrone's case but [write that] their hands are tied by the rules that govern their ability to grant relief," Schneider said. "Literally, we've got a man I believe to be innocent who's just a few steps away from death and [they say] their hands are tied. It's horrifying."

    Noling was sentenced to death six years after the bodies of Bearnhardt and Cora Hartig were found dead of gunshot wounds on the floor of their kitchen in Portage County's Atwater Township.

    He was largely convicted on the word of three men, one of whom admitted during the trial that he'd been coerced by prosecutors and police to implicate Noling to save his own skin. The other two men also later recanted, saying they lied on the stand to avoid a death sentence.

    Earlier this year, another man claimed that his foster brother, Daniel Wilson, admitted to killing the Hartigs. Wilson was executed for an unrelated murder in 2009.

    Those questions about Noling's guilt plagued at least two members of the three-judge panel.

    Citing the "worrisome scenario" of possible witness coercion, "absolutely no physical evidence linking Noling to the murders" and the existence of "other viable suspects that the prosecutor chose not to investigate or did not know of at the time," the panel said nonetheless that the lower courts had not acted unreasonably.

    A legal expert said the judges had to abide by a sweeping antiterrorism law passed after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing that severely restricts the ability of federal courts to overturn state court decisions.

    Federal judges who look at a state case and think "the state got it absolutely, totally wrong cannot reverse that case unless they find that . . . the state was unreasonable in being wrong," said Michael Benza, visiting associate professor at the Case Western Reserve University School of Law.

    "It really has created this bizarre situation, as in the Noling case, where you have a court saying, 'this conviction or this sentence is, in fact, unconstitutional in our opinion, but we are not authorized to do anything about it.' "

    Though Noling has appeals pending in state court, his federal appeals are all but exhausted. His defense team will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to hear his case, but the odds are long.

    Of 10,000 to 20,000 petitions each year, the nation's most powerful jurists agree to hear "like 75," said Benza.

    http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2011...irm_death.html

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