Condemned killer requests mercy from parole board

Associated Press

COLUMBUS

A death-row inmate scheduled to die next month for slashing a 72-year-old woman’s neck during a robbery that netted the woman’s penny collection deserves mercy because of a horrific childhood, attorneys argued before the Ohio Parole Board on Thursday.

Joseph Murphy was beaten, starved and sexually abused growing up in West Virginia, including an instance in which his father allowed a local moonshiner to rape the boy in exchange for a drink, attorneys told the board and argued in a filing presented to the panel.

Murphy’s attorneys also said the board should consider the Ohio Supreme Court’s 4-3 decision upholding Murphy’s 1992 death sentence, in which one of the three dissenting judges included then Chief Justice Thomas Moyer.