False Confession Conviction May be Tossed

03.30.11

An Ohio inmate who falsely confessed to murder in 1992 may be freed from Pickaway Correctional Institution on Friday. 

Glenn W. Tinney pled guilty to the 1988 murder of a 33-year-old man after he confessed to the murder during an interview with the Richland County Prosecutor four years later, according to the Mansfield News Journal. 
After a Mansfield police Lt. contacted the Ohio Innocence Project on Tinny’s behalf, it filed a motion in common pleas court in late October 2009 to withdraw Tinney’s guilty plea. And last week, Richland County Common Pleas Judge James DeWeese granted the motion.

If the prosecutors’ office doesn’t file a motion Friday to retry Tinney, Ohio Innocence Project attorney Karla Markley Hall said he will be released from prison.

In 2009, Mansfield police Lt. John Wendling, commander of the detective bureau, said he believes Tinney is innocent. “There’s nothing in that investigation to lead me to think otherwise,” Wendling told the News Journal. “I stand firm on my suspicions on who the real killer is.” 


Markley Hall said Tinney’s motion for the withdrawal of his guilty plea is because of the “overwhelming evidence indicating he is innocent of this crime.”

DeWeese stated in his order that the court is not finding Tinney actually innocent but that the evidence doesn’t support his guilty plea. 

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