Parole board denies request for clemency

COLUMBUS (AP) — The Ohio Parole Board on Friday voted unanimously against mercy for a death row inmate convicted of fatally stabbing a woman more than 100 times.

The board voted 8-0 against the request for clemency by Bret Hartman, who is scheduled to die by injection April 7.

He was sentenced to death for killing Wanda Snipes in Akron on Sept. 9, 1997. Police found the mutilated body of Snipes, 46, on the floor of her apartment bedroom. She’d been stabbed 138 times and her hands had been cut off. Her hands were never found.

Police found her watch and her bloody T-shirt in Hartman’s apartment.

Hartman, 35, says he discovered Snipes’ body and panicked, fearing police would suspect him since the two had had sex together recently.

The board rejected Hartman’s claim of innocence as well as a competing claim that he should be spared because of a tough childhood in which he suffered from his parents’ divorce and began abusing drugs and alcohol.

“The overwhelming evidence presented in this case removes all doubt of the guilt of Brett Xavier Hartman,” the parole board said.

Hartman’s family says police didn’t look hard enough at Snipes’ boyfriend, who had threatened violence against her before her death.

Hartman has also requested a reprieve to allow DNA testing on hair found on Snipes’ body which he says would point to another suspect. The board says courts have already rejected such testing.

Gov. Ted Strickland is weighing the board’s report.

Hartman’s attorney, David Stebbins, said the ruling was disappointing. He plans next week to ask the courts and Strickland to consider a reprieve to allow testing on the hair.

Strickland spared death row inmate Jeffrey Hill of Cincinnati last month after the board recommended unanimously that Hill be spared.

Hill killed his mother but his entire family, including his mother’s siblings, opposed the execution.