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Valley police chiefs urge no clemency for killer
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If Getsy avoids death, it could affect other cases and involving multiple offenders.
STAFF REPORT
WARREN — The Mahoning Valley Chiefs of Police Association has joined in the cause to ask Gov. Ted Strickland to allow Jason Getsy of Hubbard to be put to death for killing Ann R. Serafino and wounding her son, Charles Serafino, in their Hubbard Township home in 1995.
Getsy, 33, is scheduled for execution Aug. 18, but the state parole board last month recommended by a 5-2 vote that the governor commute Getsy’s sentence to life in prison without parole.
The board majority said it was unfair for Getsy to get the death penalty for being the triggerman in a murder-for-hire scheme when the man who ordered the hit was spared the death penalty.
“Jason Getsy has been convicted and sentenced to death by a jury of his peers, and we ask that his sentence be carried out,” the letter says.
The organization represents top administrators from 48 local, state and federal law-enforcement agencies in Trumbull, Mahoning and Columbiana counties.
The letter is in addition to a petition campaign launched by Trumbull County victim-witness advocate Miriam Fife, letters from a dozen prosecuting attorneys from around Ohio and a letter from Dennis Watkins, Trumbull County prosecutor, all urging the governor to let Getsy die.
Watkins said if Getsy’s death penalty is turned aside, it could affect other Ohio death-penalty cases and other crimes involving multiple offenders.