Cops: Man in prison likely is innocent

MANSFIELD, Ohio (AP) — A central Ohio police department has taken the unusual step of asking a group that works to free convicted inmates to look into the case of a man who confessed to murder.

The Ohio Innocence Project has filed a motion on behalf of 47-year-old Glen Tinney, asking a Richland County judge to allow Tinney to withdraw his guilty plea in the 1988 death of 33-year-old Ted White. The county prosecutor’s office is opposed.

But Mansfield police Lt. John Wendling said he has believed for years that another man committed the crime and convinced Tinney to plead guilty after the two became friends while serving time in the same facility.

“In 1992, nearly four years after the murder, Glen Tinney, through prison officials, indicated that he wanted to plead guilty to the murder of Ted White in exchange for a radio and the return of some money he claimed was his,” Wendling says in court documents.

The Innocence Project receives about 800 to 1,100 requests for help each year.

“This is the only case of any of Ohio Innocence Project cases that I am aware of where the police have approached us instead of the incarcerated person,” Project attorney Karla Markley Hall. Court filings show White’s widow also supports the motion.

Tinney told a prosecutor in 1992 that he beat White at the Akron Mattress and Waterbed store that White owned. White died three days later of head injuries. Tinney was convicted of murder, aggravated robbery and burglary and was sentenced to 19 years to life in prison.

Markley Hall said Tinney is mentally ill, and the project has said there are at least 65 factual errors in the case.

Richland County Assistant Prosecutor Gary Bishop filed a motion on Nov. 30 to oppose Tinney’s request. He said the court does not have the authority to grant the request and suggests that Tinney has taken too long to make it. Tinney’s motion was filed in October.

“Defendant does not adequately explain why it has taken him 17 years to put forth an argument on matters particularly within his knowledge since the inception of this case,” Bishop’s motion reads.

Court documents say Ohio prison inmate Mathew E. Mason, 43, is a person of interest in the murder case. He has been sentenced to 20 years to life for the 1985 murder of former Mansfield police informant and prostitute Gurcia Johnson and is eligible for parole in 2014.

Wendling says Tinney never met White and was unable to identify him in a picture. He says a retired officer saw Mason with a swollen eye in the days after the murder and that he moved out of state within days.