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COLUMBUS – The Ohio Supreme Court on Tuesday set an execution date of 2025 for a man convicted of murdering a police informant 25 years ago to prevent him from testifying against him in a case drug.
The court ruling in the death row inmate Timothy Coleman case comes as an unofficial moratorium on executions continues in Ohio, which has been unable to find the necessary lethal drugs. This is the second time this month that the court has set an execution date despite the moratorium.
The court sided with the Clark County District Attorney, who asked for an execution date with all of Coleman’s state and federal appeals ended. The court set the execution for October 30, 2025.
Coleman, 52, was convicted of the fatal 1996 shooting of Melinda Stevens, a confidential Springfield Police Department informant. Prosecutors alleged Coleman admitted his crime to various people he was held with in prison after his arrest.
Coleman’s attorneys opposed the request, arguing Coleman was unfairly targeted as a black man by overzealous prosecutors during the 1990s war on drugs. They say another man, who is white , confessed to the crime and that the man’s allegations were never investigated.
This alternative suspect’s “supposedly telling lots of lies criminal status clearly renders his testimony unworthy of the time and attention of the courts,” said Timothy Sweeney, an attorney for Coleman, in a June filing. “But courts must take witnesses as they find them, and must at least try to be consistent and fair.”
Coleman’s attorneys also say there were plenty of other suspects due to Steven’s informant activities.
One of the court’s judges, Michael Donnelly, said he was troubled that Coleman’s allegations of innocence had not been heard. But he voted in favor of setting an execution date, acknowledging that the only question in court was whether Coleman had exhausted his remedies.
Earlier this month, the court set an execution date of July 2025 for Samuel Moreland, who killed five people, including three children, in Dayton in 1985.
It is not known when, if at all, Ohio will proceed with another execution. Republican Gov. Mike DeWine said last year that because of Ohio’s difficulty finding drugs for executions, lethal injection is no longer an option and lawmakers must choose another method of death penalty before detainees can be put to death.
The bipartisan bills pending in the House and Senate would eliminate the death penalty and replace it with life without the possibility of parole. Although such bills have been introduced several times over the years, more Republicans are signing on, citing the cost to taxpayers of long appeals, the state’s ability to find deadly drugs and fear that an innocent person is not executed.
The chairman of the House criminal justice committee, Jeffrey LaRue, is not ruling out the possibility that the House bill will be approved by his committee.
“I’ll just be interested to hear arguments from both sides about where people stand on this issue,” LaRue, a Republican from central Ohio, told Gongwer News Service.
The state’s last execution dates back to July 18, 2018, when Ohio put Robert Van Hook to death for killing David Self in Cincinnati in 1985.
Coleman
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