Clemency denial urged in ’94 murders of 2 men

Photo

Mark Aaron Brown

By Marc Kovac

Mark Aaron Brown is scheduled to die Feb. 4 for killing Isam Salman and Hayder Al-Turk.

COLUMBUS — Ashraf Salman still wakes up wanting to see his dad’s coat hung in its usual place by the door, much the way he did as a 7-year-old boy one night in January 1994.

On that night, the third child of Isam Salman awoke to hear his mother and aunts and uncles crying.

He didn’t know why.

“[I] said that once [my dad] comes, everything will be OK, and he will fix any problem,” Ashraf Salman recalled. “I went back to sleep that night not knowing what my brothers and sister will have to go through for the next 15 years — a lifetime without the man that cared for us and loved us every waking moment.”

Salman, 32, and Hayder Al-Turk, 30, were gunned down that night while working at the Midway Market in Youngstown.

Mark Aaron Brown, a then-21-year-old who was high on drugs, was convicted of both murders and sentenced to death for killing Salman, the store’s owner.

On Tuesday, Mahoning County Prosecutor Paul Gains and members of Salman’s family urged the state parole board to deny Brown’s clemency request and allow his execution next month as scheduled.

But an attorney who formerly represented Brown urged the state parole board to commute his sentence to life without the possibility of parole, saying he failed to fully investigate his client’s innocence claims.

Atty. Don Malarcik said he did not request original trial notes and other files in the murder case — information that his current legal counsel say includes details that call into question Brown’s conviction and death sentence.

“It was the most significant mistake in my legal career,” Malarcik said, adding later.

Brown is scheduled to be executed Feb. 4 at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville.

He was interviewed by the state parole board last month, and the board convened a clemency hearing Tuesday in Columbus to consider whether to recommend a sentence commutation. More than 40 representatives of the inmate’s and victims’ families attended, with some added to waiting lists because of space limitations.

Legal counsel for Brown urged the parole board to grant clemency; public defender Pam Prude-Smithers focused on Brown’s continued claims that he did not shoot Salman.

She said that witnesses whose testimony backed up that assertion were not called to the stand during his trial. Another witness, in letter to the inmate, later admitted he lied about what he saw that night. And at least one member of the jury who decided in favor of the death penalty has since said it was the wrong decision.

All of those details should have been offered during the appeal process, but Brown’s legal counsel mishandled the case and never fully investigated his innocence claims, Prude-Smithers said.

Brown’s legal counsel also offered the inmate’s troubled upbringing in urging clemency. Public defender Rachel Troutman said that Brown grew up with a mother who was addicted to drugs, and that she shipped him off to live with other relatives for periods throughout his childhood.

Despite those circumstances, “I have never seen an angry, bitter cynical person,” Malarcik said. “I’ve never heard him blame anyone for where he is, despite his trial counsels’ failures, despite my failures, despite the failures of his mother. Mark holds himself accountable for where he is and what is happening in his life ... and I implore this board to consider those matters and impose a life sentence.”

Brown also has regular visits with families and friends, writes to pen pals and is in contact with his children, nephews and nieces — telling the latter to stay in school, not run the streets and not follow his path to prison, Troutman said.

“Mark does not deserve to die,” she said, adding later, “He feels remorse for taking that gun into the store as being the impetus that caused Mr. Salman’s death. He takes responsibility. He just didn’t pull the trigger.”

But Gains countered that Brown was a manipulator with a criminal background who is attempting to con his way out of the death sentence.

He said the trial jury heard all of the evidence and testimony Brown’s legal counsel now says calls into question his conviction — and the jury still convicted him and decided in favor of the death penalty. There was no evidence of another shooter.

“The sole shooter was Mark Brown, by his own words,” Gains said, adding later, “The jury heard every argument. ... That evidence was heard by the jury. The Supreme Court determined that there was no error made during jury deliberations.”

Members of Salman’s family also spoke during Tuesday’s hearing, including several of his children, who described the devastation of the murder and its aftermath.

A sister, Terri Rasul, said Brown’s actions “killed the core of our family” and led to the premature death of her mother 10 days after the murder.

She described seeing her brother and Al-Turk carried from the Midway Market in body bags and not being able to identify Salman because of the vicious nature of the crime.

“I want these people who think that Mark Brown should be granted clemency to look me in the eyes and tell me if that was their son, their father or their husband, what would they want done to him?” Rasul asked. “Mark Brown just sitting in prison, being catered to with health care, food in his belly, a shelter and so on is not a punishment.

“Mark Brown has been rewarded enough. He has had 16 more years than Isam and Hadar Al-Turk had. Mark Brown will still have the opportunity to say his goodbyes to his loved ones, choose his last meals. That’s something Isam Salman and Hadra Al-Turk were not given. It’s time for Mark Brown to pay his dues. We the society have paid way too much for way too long.”

The parole board will submit its recommendation on clemency to Gov. Ted Strickland next Wednesday.