Tyrone Noling Gets Rare Clemency Hearing in Ohio After 30 Years

Tyrone Noling, a 54-year-old Ohio death row inmate who has spent three decades maintaining his innocence in the 1990 double murder of an elderly Portage County couple, presented his case for a full pardon before the Ohio Parole Board on Tuesday in what advocates describe as a rare and significant legal milestone. The hearing marked the first clemency proceeding for an Ohio death row inmate since 2020, and the parole board is expected to deliver its recommendation to Gov. Mike DeWine by Aug. 25.

According to AP News, Noling assembled a growing body of evidence with the support of the Ohio Innocence Project, including recanted witness testimony, changed stances by the sheriff and one of the jurors at his trial, and clues pointing to an already executed killer as the possible perpetrator.

The 1990 Murders and Conviction

Noling was convicted in February 1996 for the killings of Bearnhardt and Cora Hartig, both 81, who were found shot to death in their Atwater Township home on April 5, 1990. Bearnhardt Hartig had been shot three times and his wife five times with a .25-caliber automatic handgun. The house had been ransacked, and no murder weapon was ever recovered.

Authorities said Noling, who had just turned 18 at the time, was part of a group involved in home robberies of elderly couples in nearby Alliance. Three others in the group — ages 14, 15, and 16 at the time — implicated Noling in the slayings during a burglary but later retracted their statements, claiming police pressured them to name Noling as the shooter.

Initial aggravated burglary charges against Noling were dropped in 1992, but a grand jury reindicted him in 1995 for the Hartig murders. He was sentenced to death the following year.

No Physical Evidence, Alternative Suspects

No physical evidence — no DNA, fingerprints, or other forensic material — ever linked Noling to the crime scene. His advocates point to evidence, including law enforcement notes and a cigarette butt found in the Hartigs’ driveway, that implicates two other potential suspects.

One is Dan Wilson, who was executed by lethal injection in Ohio in 2009 for a different crime. Noling’s lawyers wrote in court documents that a man told authorities his foster brother, Wilson, bragged about committing the Hartig murders. DNA from the cigarette butt excluded Noling but did not exclude Wilson.

Another potential suspect, Dennis VanSteenberg, was identified as having secretly disposed of a .25 caliber handgun under suspicious circumstances — the same caliber weapon used in the killings.

Noling’s legal team, which includes the Ohio Innocence Project and the law firms Weil, Gotshal and Manges LLP and Sidley Austin LLP, argues the prosecution withheld exculpatory evidence in violation of his constitutional rights under Brady v. Maryland. A hearing on Noling’s motion for a new trial is scheduled for Sept. 22 in Portage County Common Pleas Court.

Growing Support for Exoneration

The case has drawn remarkable support from across the legal and public spectrum. Former Portage County Sheriff Ken Howe, now 83, whose office handled the initial investigation, told the Akron Beacon Journal he now believes Noling was wrongfully convicted.

“I believe that these boys were, and are, innocent,” Howe said in an Associated Press interview.

Christine Richards, a juror from Noling’s 1996 trial, has also come forward to express doubts about his guilt, saying she now believes he is innocent. She wrote a letter to the parole board and provided video testimony urging that Noling be pardoned.

Celebrity support has amplified the case’s visibility. Kim Kardashian, who has advocated for criminal justice reform and previously supported the case of Ohio death row inmate Kevin Keith, posted about Noling’s case on her Facebook page, which has 34 million followers. Actors Hilarie Burton Morgan and Jeffrey Dean Morgan have also backed Noling’s exoneration efforts, with Burton Morgan featuring his case on her true crime show “True Crime Story: It Couldn’t Happen Here.”

Former Ohio Supreme Court Justice Michael Donnelly wrote a letter to the parole board supporting Noling’s clemency request, noting that the conviction “rested largely on statements obtained from juvenile witnesses during unrecorded interrogations — statements that were later recanted and whose reliability has been repeatedly questioned.”

Prosecutors Maintain Guilt

Portage County prosecutors continue to oppose Noling’s pardon request, insisting the jury reached the correct decision.

“We believe the jury reached the correct decision,” Portage County Prosecutor Connie Lewandowski said, according to the Akron Beacon Journal. “Our justice system provides extensive safeguards to ensure that convictions and sentences are carefully scrutinized. This case has undergone countless layers of review. At some point, the legal process must come to an end.”

Assistant Prosecutor Eric Finnegan characterized the clemency request as “another last-ditch effort to avoid being held accountable for the ghastly murder of an elderly couple who had the gall to tell him ‘NO’ when he tried to rob them.”

DeWine’s Death Penalty Reversal

The clemency hearing comes at a pivotal moment for Ohio’s death penalty. Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican and former prosecutor who co-authored Ohio’s current capital punishment law in 1981, called in June for abolishing the death penalty, saying he no longer views capital punishment as a deterrent to violent crime. As 13ABC reported, DeWine said “it is today impossible to make the case that the death penalty is a deterrent.”

Ohio has not carried out an execution since 2018 due to an unofficial moratorium, and there are currently 109 inmates on death row in the state. Noling is the only death row inmate with a clemency hearing scheduled, according to a prison department spokesperson.

What’s Next

Noling, who has said he would not accept a commutation to life without parole for a crime he didn’t commit, seeks release from prison. If freed, he would live with his cousin and work for a family business, according to his attorneys.

The parole board will deliberate in executive session following the hearing and is expected to deliver its recommendation to Gov. DeWine by Aug. 25. DeWine has the final say on whether to grant a pardon.

Separately, Noling has a court hearing scheduled for Sept. 22 in Portage County regarding his motion for a new trial. His case has been featured on “Death Row Stories” and “True Crime Story: It Couldn’t Happen Here,” and an online petition supporting his pardon has more than 1,100 signatures.

As Kevin Werner, executive director of Ohioans to Stop Executions, told the Akron Beacon Journal: “I think that, if there’s a case that exemplifies how the system has gotten it wrong, it would be this. I think Tyrone Noling is that case.”

For Noling, who has spent his entire adult life on death row, the clemency hearing represents a rare opportunity — one that could ultimately determine whether he lives out his remaining years in freedom or on death row. As he wrote in his clemency request: “I don’t know the right way to beg for my life to be given back to me, but I respect your decision and ask from the bottom of my heart.”