No Evidence Was Hidden In Noling Case, State Says

Saturday, September 02, 2006

Bill Lubinger
Plain Dealer Reporter

The Ohio attorney general's office has asked a federal judge to deny a death-row convict's plea to move his appeal to state court based on claims that prosecutors withheld evidence.

State lawyers contend, in a motion filed this week in U.S. District Court in Cleveland, that evidence wasn't concealed in the death penalty case of Tyrone Noling, and that recent news reports raising questions about his guilt were "a rehash of decade-old issues and facts" already tried.

Noling was convicted and sentenced to death in 1996 for the murders of Bearnhardt and Cora Hartig, a Portage County couple.

Last month, The Plain Dealer published stories about Noling's case that raised doubts about his guilt. The articles presented evidence that wasn't offered at Noling's trial, such as warnings from a psychologist hired by the prosecution that a key witness might make up testimony to win immunity.

Three supposed accomplices had confessed to participating in the 1990 killing of the Hartigs, naming Noling as the shooter. They later recanted, saying they lied to save themselves because an investigator for the prosecutor's office threatened them. They also claimed he twisted their words and provided them with details of the slayings when they agreed to testify against Noling.

Portage County Prosecutor Victor Vigluicci has said his investigator did nothing wrong.

After The Plain Dealer's articles ran Aug. 13, Noling's attorneys asked that his case be returned to state court. They said they did not have some of the evidence cited in the article, evidence that The Plain Dealer obtained through public records requests to the Portage County prosecutor's office.

State lawyers maintain that the newspaper's findings, on which Noling's charge of withheld evidence is based, were "unsubstantiated" and wouldn't have helped his case.

"While the bits and pieces of information from The Plain Dealer exposé may withstand the uninformed perusal by the general public," state lawyers wrote, ". . . they are a patchwork quilt filled with so many holes that they cannot hold up" in court.

In one instance, the attorney general's office stated it could not locate any document in the prosecutor's files indicating that an alternate suspect The Plain Dealer had written about refused to take a polygraph.

The Plain Dealer obtained a copy of the document from the prosecutor's office through a public records request. Click here to see a copy of it.

U.S. District Judge Donald Nugent will rule on the motion before deciding whether to let Noling's conviction stand.

To reach this Plain Dealer reporter:
blubinger@plaind.com, 216-999-5531

Used with permission.