Joe Gerrety reports for the Lafayette, Indiana Journal and Courier in an article titled, “Gov. O’Bannon denies clemency for Trueblood.” Excerpt:
Gov. Frank O’Bannon denied condemned triple murderer Joseph L. Trueblood’s request for clemency, making his Friday morning execution a near certainty.
“The judicial system has provided Trueblood repeated opportunities in multiple appeals to challenge … facts in formal, timely, and appropriate settings,” O’Bannon wrote in a seven-page statement issued late this morning.
“Indiana’s courts have not hesitated to vacate convictions or sentences in capital cases when a procedural or substantive error has been found, but no error has been found in Trueblood’s case.”
Trueblood, 46, of Lafayette, is scheduled to die by lethal injection shortly after midnight at the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City for the Aug. 15, 1988, murders his ex-girlfriend, Susan Bowsher Hughes, 22, her daughter, Ashelyn, 2, and her son, William, 1. The killings occurred in Tippecanoe County.
In denying the clemency request, O’Bannon also rejected Trueblood’s request that he be allowed to give a polygraph examination to prove his claim that his trial lawyers tricked and coerced him in 1990 into pleading guilty to the murders of the children.
This article also provides the full text of Indiana governor Frank O’Bannon’s statement, which includes the following paragraph on Trueblood’s request for a polygraph examination:
In his letter, Trueblood asked to take a “lie detector” test to show that he believed his story to be true. The facts surrounding Trueblood’s crimes have been judicially determined. The judicial system has provided Trueblood repeated opportunities in multiple appeals to challenge those facts in formal, timely, and appropriate settings. The Indiana Supreme Court has determined that the results of polygraph or “lie detector” tests cannot be used as evidence. “This is because of the inherent unreliability of polygraph examinations.” Gray v. State, 758 N.E.2d 519, 522 (Ind. 2001). Indiana’s courts have not hesitated to vacate convictions or sentences in capital cases when a procedural or substantive error has been found, but no error has been found in Trueblood’s case. I base my clemency decision on the judicially determined facts.