I urge Governor Strickland to commute the sentence of Daniel Wilson. Mr. Wilson is scheduled to be executed on Wednesday, June 3, 2009. In March of 1992, Mr. Wilson was convicted and sentenced to death for the May 4, 1991 murder of Carol Lutz.

Several factors in Mr. Wilson's case history merit executive clemency, principally that the trial court's explanation of the case's sole death sentence specification to the trial jury was ruled to be constitutionally erroneous and invalid by the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit (No. 03-3362 Wilson v. Mitchell, August 15, 2007). The erroneous trial court instruction allowed the jury to consider the death sentence while being improperly instructed how to consider and weigh the evidence in mitigation when considering the death penalty specification. Wilson is the only person on Ohio's Death Row that has not had a jury weigh a valid death sentence specification.

Other mitigating factors include Daniel's remarkably abusive childhood, his expression of deep regret for and acceptance of responsibility for the pain he caused, and his successful efforts to become a "positive and productive" member of the Ohio prison population as demonstrated by his serving as legal typist and librarian in the death row library as well as a GED tutor. Governor Strickland should commute the death sentence of Daniel Wilson.