Clemency request for killer based on childhood
He was an uneducated, abused kid from a dirt-poor West Virginia family whose father traded him for sex with another man when he was 6 in order to get a jug of moonshine.
She was an elderly widow who saved pennies for charity and sometimes brought a sandwich and a cold drink to the young man she paid to mow her lawn, Joseph Murphy.
But mild-mannered 72-year-old Ruth Predmore fought back when Murphy robbed her at knifepoint in her home on Feb. 1, 1987. Minutes later, she lay on the floor, blood spurting in the air from a deep, 5-inch gash that severed her jugular vein.
Murphy, 46, who is scheduled to be executed Oct. 18, does not deny killing Predmore. Ask, and he will calmly tell you all about it.
“I didn’t intend to do what I did,” he said at the Ohio Penitentiary at Youngstown. “I feel terrible that it happened. It should have never happened. No one deserves that kind of treatment."
Ohio Public Defender attorneys Pamela J. Prude-Smithers and Kathryn L. Sandford will not plead innocence, argue technicalities or employ legal smoke and mirrors.
Instead, at Thursday’s Ohio Parole Board clemency hearing, they will tell the raw, uncensored story of Murphy’s twisted childhood, stretching from Braxton, W.Va., to central Ohio. They will describe a sickly, borderline mentally retarded youngster who was beaten, starved, tied to a bed and raped; a teenager who spent time in a dozen different institutions in four states; and a grown man with the mental capacity of a second-grader.
They will argue he is not the “worst of the worst,” code words used to describe murderers who deserve the death penalty under Ohio law.
They will spotlight comments about Murphy from an unusual source: the late Thomas J. Moyer, former chief justice of the Ohio Supreme Court.
“In all of the death-penalty cases I have reviewed, I know of no other case in which the defendant, clearly guilty of the crime as the defendant is here, was as destined for disaster as was Joseph Murphy as a direct result of the conditions to which he was exposed by his family,” Moyer wrote in 1992.
Moyer was a dissenting vote in a 4-3 ruling supporting Murphy’s conviction and death sentence. His words were echoed in a later murder case involving Troy Tenace of Lucas County. Tenace’s death sentence was overturned; Murphy remains on Death Row.
The prosecution case
Attorneys for Marion County Prosecutor Brent Yager and Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine will explain why Murphy should be executed, as a jury decided and dozens of judges affirmed over 24 years. They will describe a premeditated killer who preyed on Predmore — a defenseless widow, dedicated churchgoer and community volunteer.
It is the first death-penalty case from Marion County to make it to this stage since the state resumed executions in 1999. It is the first central Ohio case since William D. Wickline of Franklin County was executed on March 30, 2004.
Yager was a new assistant prosecutor in 1987 when he sat in on an interview with Murphy.
“I thought he was very cold,” Yager said. “I wasn’t expecting that. You’re kind of amazed at how a person can kill someone like that just like they were eating breakfast.”
Yager clearly does not relish the thought of an execution but is determined to pursue it.
“Do I believe he deserves it? Yes. But do I want to be there? No. I have no desire to see that."
Yager remembers Murphy describing how the dying woman’s blood spurted in his eyes, causing him to wipe it away so he could steal her purse, loose pennies and other valuables.
Yager said Murphy’s upbringing doesn’t change his mind.
“Other people have had terrible childhoods, and they didn’t murder people,” he said.
The case for clemency
Among the exhibits in Murphy’s clemency application is a sworn affidavit from Helen Napper, the victim’s daughter. Napper, now deceased, said in 1987 that she opposed the death penalty for her mother’s killer. “Justice would best be served,” she said, “by the defendant being sentenced to a term of life in prison without eligibility for parole for a period of 30 years.”
The parole board also will hear from Peg Kavanaugh Predmore, 67, the victim’s niece, who met with Murphy in July.
“Joey did not receive any tools to work with, to really get by in life,” Predmore said. “He never really had a chance. Our system let him down a long time ago.”
She said she doesn’t think Murphy should be put to death and doesn’t believe her aunt would have, either.
“When his day does come down the road, I imagine she will be on the other side with open arms for him,” Predmore said.
Former Ohio Supreme Court Justice Herbert R. Brown wrote a letter supporting clemency and is expected to testify Thursday.
“The discussion in death-penalty cases often centers around whether a crime can be considered the ‘worst of the worst,’ and therefore eligible for the most severe sanction,” Brown wrote. “I have no doubt that instead, it is Mr. Murphy’s childhood and background that are the worst of the worst.”
The victim
Predmore lived at 887 Davids St. in Marion, two blocks from the Murphy home. Today, the neighborhood of modest homes is quiet except when CSX trains rumble through several times a day.
She lived alone after her husband died in 1976, Peg Predmore said. “She was a really sweet lady. My mother stopped every Sunday and picked her up for Sunday school at First Evangelical United Brethren. She was always trying to do something for someone.”
Mrs. Predmore was treasurer of the King’s Daughters and Sons, a group that collected pennies for charity. Many of the loose pennies ended up in Murphy’s hands.
An abusive childhood
Murphy was born March 22, 1965, the third of Stella and Jerry Murphy’s six children. At the time of his birth, the family lived in Braxton, W.Va., 70 miles northeast of Charleston. Neither of his parents worked regularly. They got by on food stamps, public assistance and, eventually, Joey’s Social Security disability benefits.
They lived in a tar-paper shack Murphy described as “no bigger than a semi-truck ... There was no plumbing, no electricity, no water.” The family used cans, jars and jugs for urine and waste, which were left around the house for days.
When Murphy was young, his mother became frustrated with his hyperactivity. “It was about that time when she realized if she don’t feed me, I then won’t have the energy to run around. I would go days and days without food.”
Despite his deprivation, Murphy said he loved his mother, “and I still do.”
Stella Murphy declined to participate in any way in her son’s clemency case; she did not return calls from The Dispatch to the family home in Marion.
Murphy’s father, now deceased, was an alcoholic who could go from family comedian to punisher, beating his children with switches, belts and extension cords, according to clemency records.
Like the punch line of a bad joke, Murphy was away for treatment in Colorado when his family moved to Caledonia, Ohio, without telling him.
David Murphy, one of the condemned’s younger brothers who is serving time in an Ohio prison on felony theft and burglary charges, said in an affidavit that his brother was beaten, abused and frequently molested by an uncle.
“Once as child I stabbed Joey in the head with a steak knife,” he wrote. “At the time, I thought it was funny to see a knife sticking out of Joey’s head.”
In an interview, Joey Murphy recalled how, when he was 5 or 6 years old, his father took him to a bus where a man named “Al” lived. Joey was traded for a jug of moonshine, he said.
“My dad sat down and started drinking it. Al took me to the other part of the bus ... and then he took my pants down and turned me over and raped me anally. I was screaming for my dad. He just wouldn’t help.”
It was the second time he’d been raped; it would not be the last.
How did he feel about his father?
“He was my dad. I loved him.”
When Murphy was 21, his family moved to Marion. There, he mowed grass and did odd jobs. Among his regular customers was Ruth Predmore.
“When we spoke, she was nice,” he said. “Sometimes in the middle of cutting grass she would come out with a sandwich and lemonade.”
Murphy said that after his sister, Drema, was seriously injured in a car-train accident, the family needed money for medical bills. Murphy and his brother-in-law made plans to steal from area homes so they could pawn the purloined goods for money.
He wrote Predmore a note, saying, “I want your money. Put it in a bag and put it in your yard or i’ll kill you tonight. No money. No life.”
Murphy said he never intended to kill Predmore, but he wanted to scare her so she would cooperate. When she resisted that night at her house, Murphy said he panicked. “I still had the knife in my hand. I swung it at her and I ran.”
To avoid abuse as a child and later as a teenager, Murphy described setting fires in homes, barns and abandoned buildings.
“When I was little, it was my rescue. As I was getting older, listening to the firetrucks and the police sirens and the lights, it was like relief. ‘Finally, someone’s here to help.’ ”
A month away from his execution, Murphy sees no rescuers in sight.
“No firetrucks and lights this time,” he said.
More;
www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2011/09/13/clemency-request-based-on-childhood.html
