46-year-old Joseph Murphy faces execution next month for what he admits to doing in 1987 - slashing the throat of 72-year-old Ruth Predmore while robbing her in her home just down the street from Murphy’s house in Marion. Pam Prude-Smithers of the Ohio Public Defender’s Office told the parole board that Murphy deserves mercy – for his sentence to be commuted to life in prison – because he’s borderline mentally retarded, and because of what she called the chaos and abuse he endured growing up in West Virginia.
“His father was a raging alcoholic, his mother was an abusive and ineffectual parent. There were no sexual boundaries in the home. At one point Joey’s father was having sex with his wife’s brother and he was also having sex with his daughter’s husband. Joey’s life was so outside the bounds of what we consider normal that it’s shocking.”
Former Ohio Supreme Court justice Herbert Brown had voted against the death penalty for Murphy when the case came to the high court in 1992. For the first time ever, Brown spoke out for a condemned killer before the parole board.
“His background could not have been worse. He had really no shelter, no food, wasn’t fed adequately, sold for sexual relations, I think, by his alcoholic father when he was six years old, family left him in a burning house, he was beaten and abused.
But Brenda Leikala with the Ohio Attorney General’s office told the board those terrible circumstances don’t make someone a killer, or excuse someone for murder.
“I don’t discount that he had a bad childhood. I’m not going to say that he had a good childhood at all, because he didn’t. He grew up in a very impoverished area. However, not everyone who grew up in Clay County, West Virginia turned out to be murderers.”
And Leikala notes Murphy’s five siblings had what she called “the same bad parents” and didn’t turn commit deadly crimes. And while Murphy’s supporters argued that he’s not the worst of the worst, Marion County Prosecutor Brent Yager said he should have the sentence he received.
“While today we may debate whether or not Mr. Murphy deserves clemency, or deserves to be executed, there is one fact that is sometimes lost in all the appeals and all the hearings, and that fact is most certainly that Ms. Predmore did not deserve to be executed by Mr. Murphy.”
Ruth Predmore’s only daughter died a few years ago, but she left an affadavit saying she opposed the death penalty for Murphy. Predmore’s great-niece Peg Predmore-Kavanaugh knew Murphy, who she calls Joey, and she doesn’t want him put to death either.
“It would be far better saving somebody’s life than seeing him executed because whatever he does, it’s not going to bring my aunt back. (Do you want Joey executed?) No.”
Leikala told the parole board the wishes of surviving family members are important, but they don’t determine a criminal’s sentence, and shouldn’t determine clemency. And she said several family members support the death penalty for Predmore’s killer, including Predmore’s great niece Tonya Kardosh. Leikala read from a letter Kardosh wrote.
“The damage has been done and it’s obviously irreversible. I believe it is now time to pay the punishment ordered by the state of Ohio. Joseph Murphy has asked for forgiveness. But I believe God will have to make that call.”
The parole board will make a recommendation to Gov. John Kasich in the next few weeks. Joseph Murphy is set to die by lethal injection on October 18.