COLUMBUS – Dale Johnston admits he’s a stubborn cuss.
He’s not going to go down, either legally or literally, until he wins the acknowledgment he has sought for more than three decades: He’s not a killer.
“I’m innocent, and I always have been,” Johnston said. “If I live long enough, I might finally get my justice. I’m 82 now. I’m pushing it. But, I’m still in the game.”
Johnston’s bid to be declared legally innocent of a pair of grisly murders he did not commit was revived on Wednesday by the Ohio Supreme Court.
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The justices ruled unanimously that he is entitled to seek a finding of innocence and, if successful, collect damages for wrongful imprisonment for the nearly seven years he spent on Death Row. But the state will continue to fight him.
Johnston’s lawyer had argued that his client, from Grove City, was entitled to another chance at vindication under a 2003 change to the state’s wrongful-imprisonment law.
The court agreed, saying the change in law retroactively applies to Johnston’s latest case, entitling him to return to the appeals court to seek what he said was long-denied justice.
Johnston was sentenced to death for fatally shooting his stepdaughter and her fiance in 1982 and carving up their bodies, with their heads and limbs buried in a Hocking County cornfield and their torsos thrown into the Hocking River.
However, the shaky case against him, built on prosecutorial misconduct and withheld evidence, fell apart on appeal and Johnston eluded the electric chair. He was freed from prison in 1990. “I was flat-out framed,” Johnston said.
Lawyers for the state will continue to argue that Johnston is barred from pursuing his claim by the statute of limitations and a prior finding that he was not wrongfully imprisoned.