Ohio Death Row Inmate Asks Parole Board to Free Him

Tyrone Noling has spent 30 years on death row for the double murder of an elderly Ohio couple that he insists he didn't commit. The AP reports the 54-year-old had a rare chance Tuesday to make his case for a full pardon to the Ohio Parole Board. Death row inmates don't typically land clemency hearings until they have an execution date, which Noling does not, so winning Tuesday's hearing was a victory. He seeks release from prison and has said he would not accept a commutation to life without parole. His case has been the subject of documentaries and true-crime podcasts and garnered celebrity attention from Kim Kardashian and actors Hilarie Burton and Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who all support his exoneration.

Noling was convicted in the April 5, 1990, killings of Bearnhardt and Cora Hartig, both 81, at their Portage County home. The couple's bodies were discovered on the kitchen floor of their Atwater Township home by a neighbor who noticed their lawn mower had been in front of their home for several days. Both had been shot and the house had been ransacked. Authorities said Noling, who had just turned 18 at the time, was part of a group involved in home robberies of elderly couples. Three others in the group—14, 15 and 16 at the time—implicated Noling in the slayings of the Hartigs during a burglary but later retracted their statements, saying that police pressured them to name Noling as the shooter.

Initial aggravated burglary charges brought against Noling were dropped in 1992, but a grand jury reindicted him in 1995 for the Hartig murders. He was sentenced to death in 1996. No physical evidence tied him to the crime, and no murder weapon was ever found. Noling's advocates say evidence, including law enforcement notes and a cigarette butt found in the Hartigs' driveway, points to two other potential suspects. One is Dan Wilson, who was executed by lethal injection in Ohio in 2009 for a different crime.

Following Tuesday's hearing, the first for an Ohio death row inmate since 2020, the parole board will by Aug. 25 issue its recommendation to Gov. Mike DeWine, who has the final say. DeWine, a Republican, called in June for abolishment of the death penalty—saying his stance has changed because he no longer views capital punishment as a deterrent to violent crime.