Execution set, but Parole Board recommends clemency
WEDNESDAY, MAY 19, 2010 2:52 AM
BY ALAN JOHNSON
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
Richard Nields was convicted of strangling his girlfriend in an alcohol-fueled rage in March 1997.
When does one murderer deserve to live while others die?
That's the weighty question the Ohio Parole Board handed Gov. Ted Strickland yesterday by recommending that Richard Nields should not be executed next month for killing his longtime girlfriend, Patricia Newsome, 59, in an alcohol-induced rage on March 27, 1997.
The day before Nields' 60th birthday, the board split 4-3 in urging clemency for the Hamilton County man, who is scheduled to be lethally injected June 10 at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility near Lucasville.
Strickland, a Democrat, former Methodist minister and prison psychologist, has rejected clemency 14 of 15 times in his first term as governor; all 14 men were executed.
Hamilton County Prosecutor Joseph Deters strongly objected to the clemency recommendation.
"For this board, after 13 years, to second-guess jurors and numerous judges is both frustrating and disturbing," he said. "I just hope that Gov. Strickland will reject this recommendation for clemency and let justice be carried out."
Deters said the implication is "that a deliberate murder during an aggravated robbery does not merit the death penalty. This office rejects that notion and suggests that the Parole Board is bound by Ohio law in this regard. They are not free to disregard this judgment of the Ohio legislature as to what crimes are death-eligible."
However, the board's recommendation comes at a crucial time, just days after Ohio Supreme Court Justice Paul E. Pfeifer told The Dispatch that all 161 Death Row cases should be reviewed. He suggested that as a result of changes in the law and societal standards, many cases would not have resulted in death sentences had they been tried today.
That is the argument made by Nields' attorneys that four members of the parole board found persuasive. They said his sentence should be commuted to life without the possibility of parole.
They pointed to a ruling by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that the facts in the case "just barely get Nields over the death threshold."
The board majority also cited Pfeifer's dissent in the 2002 case.
"The type of crime Nields did is not the type of crime the General Assembly did contemplate or should have contemplated as a death penalty offense," Pfeifer wrote. "It is about alcoholism, rage and rejection and about Nields' inability to cope with any of them. It is a crime of passion imbued with pathos and reeking of alcohol."
Parole board members who said Nields should be denied clemency cited his history of abuse against women, the fact that robbery was part of the crime and that Nields has not been "forthcoming about details of the offense and his prior history of violence."
Nields' guilt is undisputed. He told several people at bars he visited shortly after the murder that he killed his then-girlfriend. He later confessed to police.
Nields also described the murder in correspondence he wrote that became part of a book, Truth Be Told: Life Lessons from Death Row.
"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."
Nields added, "I didn't plan it, it happened in a blackout - an alcoholic blackout."
Court records show the couple had a volatile, decade-long relationship. She sold real estate; he was a musician who occasionally played keyboards in bars and clubs. They argued violently after Newsome told Nields to pack up and leave.
Nields was given the death penalty because prosecutors showed that the murder happened during a robbery. Nields stole Newsome's Cadillac, jewelry and traveler's checks after he strangled her.
ajohnson@dispatch.com
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