COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) - Ohio Gov. John Kasich has delayed the execution of a killer who was set to die in September after he said the inmate's attorneys stopped working on the case.
The decision Friday by the Republican governor moves the scheduled execution of Cleveland Jackson from September to May 2019.
Jackson was sentenced to die for the 2002 shooting of a 17-year-old girl in Lima during a robbery.
Kasich said he delayed the execution after Jackson's former attorneys admitted they failed to do any work to prepare for Jackson's application for clemency over the past four years.
Attorney James Jenkins declined to comment. A message was left with attorney John Gibbons.
On Friday, Kasich also spared condemned killer Raymond Tibbetts, going against the recommendation of the Ohio Parole Board. Kasich said that there were "fundamental flaws" in sentencing Tibbetts. Jurors didn't learn about Tibbett's background as a neglected and abused child.
One juror, Ross Geiger, brought those concerns to Kasich's attention earlier this year in a letter that prompted the governor to delay Tibbetts' Feb. 13 execution to give the parole board more time to review the matter.
Geiger told The Enquirer he's glad Kasich took his concerns seriously, but he said he's sorry the families of Tibbetts' victims had to endure more months of uncertainty and media attention.
"It's not like I feel like there's a victory here," Geiger said. "I don't think anybody really wins."
Kasich commuted Tibbetts' sentence to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Tibbetts had been set to be executed Oct. 17.
Tibbetts had been sentenced to death for beating his wife, Sue Crawford, to death and fatally stabbing his landlord, Fred Hicks, on the same day in 1997 in Over-the-Rhine.
The Ohio Parole Board had given Tibbetts' case a second look after a former juror, Ross Geiger of Loveland, wrote a letter to Kasich, expressing concern that jurors didn't know more about Tibbett's background before sentencing him to death. Ultimately, the parole board voted 8-1 against clemency.
Kasich disagreed. In a news release, the governor explained that "the defense’s failure to present sufficient mitigating evidence, coupled with an inaccurate description of Tibbetts’s childhood by the prosecution, essentially prevented the jury from making an informed decision about whether Tibbetts deserved the death penalty."
Mark Hicks, the nephew of Fred Hicks, had pleaded with Ohio officials to execute Tibbetts for his crimes in a letter.
"The Hicks family knows Governor Kasich has what it takes to sign a death warrant. He's proven he is going to follow the law! The law in Ohio allows for heinous killers like Tibbetts to be executed," Hicks wrote.
Tibbetts isn't the first death row inmate whom Kasich has spared. In March, Kasich commuted the death sentence of Toledo-area killer William Montgomery. In that case, the state parole board had recommended mercy in a narrow vote.
