Ohio Disputes Clemency for 7 on Death Row

Ohio’s attorney general sought Tuesday to overturn clemency for 11 prisoners granted by former Gov. Richard F. Celeste before he left office.

Atty. Gen. Lee Fisher said in a legal opinion that Celeste violated state law in the way he granted the commutations and pardons to the inmates, seven of whom were on Death Row.

The governor should have filed applications with the Adult Parole Authority seeking an investigation and recommendations in each case, Fisher said, but he failed to do so in seven of the 11 in question. In the other four, he acted before the agency made any recommendation.

Fisher filed a complaint asking the Franklin County Common Pleas Court to reverse the 11 clemencies. A hearing on the request will be scheduled today, a court officer said.

Fisher and Celeste are both Democrats. Fisher took office with Republican Gov. George V. Voinovich on Jan. 14.

In his statements commuting the death penalties, Celeste said that mental impairment and abuse had led the condemned inmates into crime.

The attorney general’s challenge will not affect Celeste’s commutation of country singer Johnny Paycheck’s sentence for shooting a man in a bar or the pardons granted to 26 women convicted of killing or assaulting men who had abused them.