In 1989, Alaska was cleaning up the Exxon Valdez oil spill, San Francisco was cleaning up a huge earthquake, and U.S. troops were cleaning Manuel Noriega out of Panama.

        In Cincinnati, police were cleaning up a messy murder.

        Henry Turner, 78, was murdered during a burglary of his York Street apartment on Christmas Eve. Mr. Turner was stabbed twice in the chest and once in the chin. He bled to death, with a knife stuck in his right wrist.

        The man who did it, Jerome Campbell, was sentenced to death and has been living unhappily ever after on death row, slowly exhausting 30 layers of state and federal appeals.

Justice delayed

               His case is important now for two reasons:

        It illustrates how the justice system moves death-penalty cases at the speed of grass growing in quicksand.

        And Mr. Campbell is the first among 204 death-row inmates in Ohio to ask for a DNA test.

        Until last week, no death-row inmate had taken advantage of a policy available for 18 months, to take a DNA test and prove what every convict claims: innocence.

        This doesn't exactly fit the news stories about dozens of wrongly accused inmates being set free by DNA tests. It doesn't fit the “facts” we hear from death-penalty opponents, who claim the prisons are crammed with innocent men.

        Actually, what the facts show is that most sentence reversals are caused by technical trial errors or mistakes by prosecutors. They seldom have anything to do with actual guilt or innocence.

        In Ohio, the failure of inmates to request DNA tests says a lot. “We think that the fact that no one had taken us up on our offer as of the beginning of April speaks for itself,” said Joe Case, spokesman for Ohio Attorney General Betty Montgomery. “DNA is powerful, accurate science. If someone had evidence available to prove their innocence, one would think they'd be asking for testing right away.”

        Mr. Campbell has requested such a test, but it's not clear yet if he will qualify, Mr. Case said. There has to be adequate evidence for a test, and the test must be likely to demonstrate actual innocence or guilt.

Did not apply

               Here's something else we won't hear from the death-penalty opponents: Defense lawyers, friends, protesters and John Byrd himself all claimed he was innocent before he was executed in February. But none of them ever asked for a DNA test that was available.

        The record showed that blood on his pants matched the blood type of the man he killed in a Cincinnati convenience-store robbery in 1983. If he was innocent, why didn't he demand a DNA test?

        Because he was guilty.

        The 2002 annual report on Capital Crimes by the Ohio attorney general says that for 204 death-row inmates, there are 288 murder victims. And while flowers bloom and die on the graves of those men, women and children, the courts stall and delay.

        The U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati has sat on one appeal, doing nothing for eight years. Jerome Campbell has been killing time since 1989.

        It's about time for Ohio to clean up its justice system.
       E-mail pbronson@enquirer.com or call 768-8301.

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