A woman convicted of killing her 28-day-old baby in a microwave oven in Dayton should receive clemency from Gov. Mike DeWine, Derrick Foward, president of the Dayton chapter of the NAACP, said, according to The Columbus Dispatch.
China Arnold, 46, applied for clemency with the Ohio Parole Board on Oct. 28, The Columbus Dispatch reported. DeWine declined to comment, The Dispatch reported.
Arnold is incarcerated at the Dayton Correctional Institution for the 2005 murder of her daughter, Paris Talley, according to The Columbus Dispatch. At trial, she argued that she was too intoxicated to have committed the crime and that a young family member had put the infant in the microwave oven, The Dispatch reported.
Arnold was charged with a capital offense, but the jury deadlocked during the sentencing phase of her 2008 trial, The Columbus Dispatch reported. Montgomery County Common Pleas Court Judge Mary Wiseman then sentenced her to life in prison without parole, according to The Dispatch.
The application now starts a formal process in Columbus. Under the Ohio Constitution, the governor may grant pardons, which are an official forgiveness, or commutations, which reduce a sentence, The Columbus Dispatch explained in its reporting.
State law says the governor may grant clemency only after the Ohio Parole Board has made a recommendation on an application, according to The Columbus Dispatch. The governor is not required to follow the board’s recommendation, The Dispatch reported.
For Arnold, the distinction matters: a commutation, as The Columbus Dispatch explained in its reporting, would reduce her life-without-parole sentence rather than erase the conviction, while a pardon would be an official forgiveness of the offense. Either form of relief can only reach the governor’s desk after the parole board completes its review and sends its recommendation, The Dispatch reported.
No timetable for a parole board recommendation or a decision by DeWine was reported. Arnold’s case, decided in Montgomery County Common Pleas Court, remains one of Ohio’s most widely reported criminal cases from the 2000s.
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