Inmate moved off Ohio's death row

Strickland grants clemency to man set to die Thursday for strangling girlfriend in 1997.

Richard Nields (left) owes his life to 2 opinionated judges and flawed testimony by a now-disgraced medical examiner.

True, it was Gov. Ted Strickland who approved clemency yesterday, sparing Nields from his June 10 execution.

But both Strickland and the Ohio Parole Board, in deciding in favor of life without parole for Nields, agreed that his case was not the "worst of the worst" that Ohio lawmakers envisioned when they re-enacted Ohio's capital punishment law in 1981.

"I concur with the rationale and recommendation of the Ohio Parole Board majority and have, therefore, decided to commute Mr. Nields' sentence to a term of life in prison without the possibility of parole," Strickland said in a statement.

It was the second time in 16 cases to come before him that Strickland approved clemency. The other was Jeffrey D. Hill, also a Hamilton County case, in February 2009.

So, instead of a long, one-way ride from the Ohio Penitentiary in Youngstown to the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility near Lucasville, Nields will move off of death row next week and into the general population of another Ohio prison.

He will be just another inmate, no longer a condemned man.

Carol Wright, Nields' federal public defender, said Nields was "very excited and very thankful" when he learned clemency had been approved.

"We're extremely pleased the governor recognized the compelling nature of Rich's case," Wright said. "This started out as a case that was not the worst of the worst."

Nields, 60, was sentenced to be executed for choking to death his longtime girlfriend, Patricia Newsome, 59, in an alcohol-induced rage on March 27, 1997. His conviction and death sentence were upheld by courts at all levels.

Hamilton County Prosecutor Joseph T. Deters said yesterday that he was "disappointed" at the governor's decision. He said previously it was "frustrating and disturbing" that Strickland and the Parole Board would substitute their judgment for decisions made by courts and judges over 13 years.

At the heart of the clemency ruling were questions raised by Ohio Supreme Court Justice Paul E. Pfeifer and Judge Ronald Lee Gilman of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and testimony, since discredited, by Dr. Paul Shrode, a former Hamilton County medical examiner.

Shrode testified in Nields' 1997 murder trial that bruises on Newsome's neck showed that he choked her, left for up to 2 hours, then returned and finished the job. That made the murder premeditated, not an impulsive act of passion.

Dr. Robert Pfalzgraf, Shrode's supervisor in Hamilton County, later said the findings were not "scientifically supported."

Shrode was fired recently as acting chief medical examiner in El Paso County, Texas.

Nields' attorneys also pointed to Judge Gilman's comment in July 2007 that his case "just barely gets Nields over the death threshold."

Justice Pfeifer, in his dissent in the 2002 decision affirming Nields' death sentence, said the murder was "a crime of passion imbued with pathos and reeking of alcohol."

Nields described Newsome's murder in a book that contained some of his death row correspondence.

"I threw her down on the kitchen floor and strangled her to death. It was rage, insanity, I can't explain it. I just hated her so much at the moment I wanted her dead. I killed my best friend."

Source: Columbus Dispatch, June 6, 2010