Board recommends against clemency

June 21, 2012 at 12:00a.m.

COLUMBUS

The state parole board is recommending against clemency for a Youngstown man accused of gunning down a shopkeeper more than 25 years ago.

In a split decision delivered to Gov. John Kasich on Wednesday morning, board members said they were not swayed by arguments that John Jeffrey Eley is mentally disabled and committed the murder under the influence of a violent career criminal.

Five of the eight parole-board members offered the unfavorable recommendation, saying Eley’s “prior claims of incompetence, mental retardation and mental illness have been addressed and rejected by both state and federal courts” and that “Eley’s behavior can be explained due to his antisocial personality traits and not necessarily due to mental disability.”

But dissenting members cited opposition to the execution from former Mahoning County officials, among other reasons, for granting clemency. They wrote, “There are many prisoners on death row for aggravated murder during the course of a store robbery. Many of those have serious factors that are not present in this case [such as execution style or multiple slayings] that aggravate them. This case does not have circumstances to make it the worst of the worst.”

Eley is scheduled to be executed July 26 at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville, pending any last-minute legal challenges and Kasich’s final decision on clemency.

Eley was convicted for the 1986 shooting death of Ihsan “Easy” Aydah during a robbery of the Sinjil Market. He told investigators at the time that he shot Aydah after the shopkeeper reached under a counter for a gun and was aiming at the victim’s shoulder and did not intend to kill him, though the gunshot entered Aydah’s head inches above the earlobe.

Eley told parole board members last month that he was innocent of the crime, that police fabricated his confession and that he should be released from prison. He has not cooperated with public defenders in the clemency process.

Legal counsel who appeared before the parole board on his behalf argued that Eley is intellectually disabled and was manipulated by another man who instigated the robbery and provided the gun used in the crime.

The former Mahoning County prosecutor who sought the death penalty in the case now says he doesn’t think the punishment fits Eley’s crime.

Public defenders also pointed out other mitigating factors — Eley’s impoverished childhood, a history of alcohol and drug abuse and head injuries and likely brain impairment — among reasons for a sentence commutation.

And a psychologist presented as an expert in mental disability said he believed Eley is mentally disabled and, if tried today, likely would not qualify for a death penalty.

But prosecutors called Eley a career criminal with a lengthy record of his own who continues to deny responsibility for the crime, despite an earlier confession.

Parole Board Chairwoman Cynthia Mausser and four other members recommended against clemency in the case, stating that factors in the case “do not outweigh the fact that Eley took the gun … entered the store with the intent to rob the victim, knew that the victim had a gun and might try and use it and then shot him in the head. … It is doubtful that [Eley and the other man involved in the robbery] intended to leave the victim alive after the robbery.”

But three other parole board members, including Cathy Collins-Taylor, short-time head of the state’s Department of Public Safety, said Eley was not the “worst of the worst” and that the “retributive needs of the state to condemn this very serious crime can be met with a punishment of life imprisonment without parole.”