Portage County killer won’t appeal decision

Associated Press

COLUMBUS

A condemned inmate scheduled to die next week for killing a teenager during a 1985 farmhouse robbery in Rootstown has decided not to appeal a judge’s order allowing the execution, his attorney said Friday.

If put to death, 49-year-old Mark Wiles would be the first inmate executed in Ohio in six months after legal fights over the state’s lethal injection policies.

Wiles’ attorney Allen Bohnert told The Associated Press that Wiles was not appealing but declined to say why or comment further.

Wiles’ decision came two days after Gov. John Kasich refused to spare him, a decision that upheld the Ohio Parole Board’s ruling to deny Wiles clemency.

U.S. District Court Judge Gregory Frost ruled last week that the state had narrowly demonstrated it was serious about following its own lethal- injection procedures.

Frost said he was “admittedly skeptical” about Ohio’s ability to carry out the execution properly but said he was permitting the execution Wednesday.

Attorneys who have represented Wiles before the Ohio Parole Board called the state’s clemency system arbitrary and unpredictable.

He was sentenced to die for killing his employers’ son, 15-year-old Mark Klima, in a Portage County farmhouse in Rootstown in 1985.