Ohio Gov. Bob Taft decided to keep Jerome Campbell alive Thursday, granting the convicted murderer a lifetime reprieve from the death chamber.

We should all thank him.

Not because Campbell is innocent, but because he might be.

Campbell was convicted 14 years ago for 1988 Christmas Eve robbery and murder of Henry Turner. Turner was 78-year-old retired crane operator, living alone in Cincinnati's West End when somebody broke into his apartment and stabbed him to death with a kitchen knife.

Police described Turner as a bootlegger, who sold untaxed whiskey and cigarettes to others around the neighborhood. The theory was that Campbell, who had once lived in the same building, thought the old man had money stashed in the apartment and broke in to steal it. When he found Turner at home, he killed him, leaving a bloody scene in the kitchen and hallway.

The jury thought so too. They were shown a pair of the suspect's shoes that were stained with blood. There was testimony about Campbell's fingerprints in and around the apartment. Jailhouse informants said Campbell told them he did it. He asked his girlfriend to lie about an alibi for him. Another woman said she had seen Campbell in the neighborhood on the day of the killing.

Campbell has always claimed he was innocent, but not many people believed him and he lost repeated appeals. His arguments never had much traction until the state of Ohio passed a law in 2001 that provided DNA testing for death row inmates. Campbell's shoes were tested and it turned out the blood on them belonged to him, not the victim.

That started people asking a bunch of "what ifs," about the original trial. What if the jurors had been told those bloody shoes didn't have anything to do with the case? What if the jurors had been told that the two jailhouse snitches who said Campbell admitted the crime had been given breaks by the prosecutor in exchange for their testimony? What if Campbell had asked his girlfriend to lie, not because he was guilty, but just because he didn't have any alibi and he was afraid of being convicted? What if Campbell was telling the truth about being seen in the neighborhood and leaving his fingerprints in the apartment because he was one of Turner's customers?

None of those "what ifs" would have mattered if it hadn't been proved by the DNA that the blood on the shoes didn't belong to the victim. Hamilton County Prosecutor Mike Allen now says that evidence is irrelevant because investigators don't think Campbell was wearing that pair of shoes at the time of the killing anyway. Then why was the bloody pair shown to the jury at all? Clearly it was done to leave the impression that Campbell had stabbed Turner and then tracked the victim's blood home with him. Without that image, maybe the jury would not have voted to convict.

That's what the Ohio Parole Board thought. In April they took the unprecedented step of recommending that the governor grant Campbell clemency, commuting his death sentence to life in prison. It was the first time the board had made such a recommendation since Ohio began executing prisoners in 1999 after a 36-year moratorium.

None of this means Campbell is innocent. In its finding last month, the parole board said it didn't question his guilt, only whether the jury would have recommended the death penalty rather than life if they had known what we know now.

In granting the clemency, Taft made it clear he still thinks Campbell is guilty, but he couldn't get past the impression those shoes must have left with the jurors.

For him they were a big "what if?"

Contact David Wells at 768-8310; fax: 768-8610; e-mail: dwells@enquirer.com. Cincinnati.Com keyword: Wells.