29 October 2023 :
October 25, 2023 - Michael R. Turner, 64, White, to now serve life in prison without possibility of parole
Michael R. Turner, who has been on death row since his 2002 conviction on two murder charges will now serve life in prison under a 2021 Ohio law forbidding the execution of people who were severely mentally ill at the time of their offense.
Turner was sentenced to death for the June 12, 2001, killing of his estranged wife, Jennifer Lyles Turner, and her boyfriend, Ronald Seggerman. A three-judge panel sentenced Turner to death after he pleaded guilty in 2002.
Last year, Turner filed a petition stating he was ineligible for execution and included an affidavit from a psychiatrist who found him to be mentally ill at the time he committed the murders. A psychiatrist hired by the court to give a second opinion agreed with the first.
"Given the two experts’ agreement and the lack of viable, factual reasons to oppose Turner’s petition, the prosecutor’s office did not oppose removing Turner from death row and being sentenced to life in prison without parole," the Franklin County Prosecutor's Office said in a release.
The prosecutor's office discussed the situation with families of both victims. But under the 2021 state law, any offender not eligible to be executed due to mental illness instead is resentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole.
Turner is currently incarcerated in Chillicothe Correctional Institution, according to Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction records.
While Ohio has no official moratorium on executions, the state has not executed any death row inmates since 2018. Many recent executions have been postponed as the state struggles to acquire the drugs used in lethal injections.
