STORY: "Ohio death row inmate seeks full pardon in 30-year-old murder case," by Multi-media journalist and News Reporter Brea Spencer, published by WSYX, on August 23, 2026.
GIST: "30 years ago Tyrone Noling was convicted for the 1990 double murder of 81-year-old Bearnhardt and Cora Hartig at their home in Portage County and has been on Ohio's death row ever since.
On Tuesday, Aug. 18, the now 54-year-old appeared before the Ohio Parole Board to argue for a full pardon in a clemency hearing, the first for an Ohio death row inmate since 2020.
Noling has adamantly insisted that he did not commit the crime and with the support of the Ohio Innocence Project, he collected evidence that potentially proves he was not responsible.
Death row inmates typically are not granted clemency hearings until they have an execution date, Noling does not have one set.
According to the Associated Press, some of the evidence gathered includes recanted witness testimony, changed stances by the sheriff and one of the jurors at his trial, and information that points to another possible perpetrator — Dan Wilson, who was executed by lethal injection in Ohio in 2009 for a different crime.
Noling is seeking release from prison and has said he would not accept a commutation to life without parole for a crime he didn’t commit.
On April 5, 1990, a neighbor found Bearnhardt and Cora Hartig’s bodies on the kitchen floor. The couple had both been shot multiple times with a .25-caliber automatic handgun.
At the time Noling had just turned 18 and authorities said he was part of a group that was involved in a string of home robberies of elderly couples. Three others in the group, also teens, implicated Noling in the murders but later retracted their statements, expressing that they were pressured by police to name him as the shooter.
A grand jury indicted Noling in 1995 for the Hartig murders after initially dropping aggravated burglary charges in 1992. He was eventually sentenced to death in 1996.
No physical evidence tied Noling to the crime and no murder weapon was ever found.
It is speculated that law enforcement notes and a cigarette butt found in the Hartigs’ driveway point to two other potential suspects. One of those being Wilson, who was also allegedly heard bragging about committing the crime.
In 2017, Noling unsuccessfully attempted to appeal the ruling by requesting DNA testing of the cigarette butt and other evidence from the crime scene.
Former Portage County Sheriff Ken Howe testified on Noling’s behalf at the clemency hearing. Howe said there were red flags at the time and that evidence that has accumulated has now convinced him to support Noling.
“I believe that these boys were, and are, innocent,” Howe said in an interview with Associated Press.
Nolings case has drawn national attention and been featured in documentaries and true-crime podcasts.
The parole board is expected to deliberate and deliver a recommendation to Gov. Mike DeWine by Aug. 25.
The entire story can be read at:
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog. FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."Lawyer Radha Natarajan: Executive Director: New England Innocence Project; FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true;
