What the attorney thinks - John Spirko

We just wrapped up the story of John Spirko, a man who's spent over 40 years in prison for a murder that put him on death row, a murder he's always maintained he's innocent of, even though he was the one who put himself in the firing line of detectives. So as always when we finish these cases, it's time to find out what the man they call 'The Voice of Reason' thinks, does he believe John has a case for innocence, or is he not convinced? Let's find out from Michael Leonard of Leonard Trial Lawyers in Chicago, Illinois.

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In 1982, postmistress Betty Jane Mottinger was abducted from her one-room post office in Elgin, Ohio — a town of fifty people and murdered.

Six weeks later, John Spirko, a career criminal with a talent for spinning stories, decided to trade invented information about her death for a deal that would keep his girlfriend out of prison. It didn't work. Instead, his web of lies contradictory, provably wrong, and completely fabricated, somehow became the centrepiece of a capital murder prosecution. No physical evidence. No connection to the victim. No connection to the crime scene. Just the words of a man who admitted he made it all up.

John Spirko has been on Ohio's death row, and now serves life without parole, for over forty years. A federal judge called his conviction a foundation of sand. A governor said there was enough doubt to spare his life but not enough to free him.

This is his story as told by him from his prison cell in Ohio.

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