Even more dramatically, Slagle's suicide also occurred approximately 36 hours after prosecutors in his case discovered shocking new information that might have precluded his execution. On the Friday before Slagle died, one of the prosecutors involved in his long-ago murder trial disclosed to current prosecutors that a plea deal had been discussed among lawyers before Slagle's trial -- but that Slagle had never been told of a possible deal. Such a revelation, coming from a former prosecutor, almost certainly would have stayed Slagle's execution and likely would have pushed Ohio into granting him clemency.

But just as no one evidently told Billy Slagle about the plea deal 25 years ago, no one was able to get to Slagle in time last month to tell him the news about the plea negotiations and the hope it represented. Thus this story of crime and punishment, of law and order, morphed into a work of Shakespeare: Billy Slagle killed himself for lack of hope, even though hope was careening toward him in the form of this material new information that cast doubt upon the fairness of his trial.

Slagle's death prompted an internal review by the state's Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, which concluded that the conditions of his confinement at the Chillicothe Correctional Institution were "inadequate" in many respects. Less clear is whether there will ever be a similar investigation into the last-minute revelation of alleged plea deal discussions that some say were never disclosed to a capital defendant -- or, for that matter, why Ohio's governor and parole board were so intent on executing a defendant who, prosecutors say, would not be brought up on capital charges were his crime committed today.



The First Death

The killing of Mari Anne Pope was particularly brutal and senseless. She was stabbed 17 times in her bed, and savagely beaten, in front of two children who were staying with her in her home that night. The children escaped, went to a neighbor's home, and the police were called to the scene. Slagle, barely 18, was caught hiding behind a door in Pope's house and there was never a question of his guilt. He literally had blood on his hands. He was promptly indicted, convicted and sentenced to death -- the whole process took less than eight months. He entered the state's prison system in May 1988. He was 19 years old.

As with many young people driven to violence, Slagle's childhood was terrible. Both parents were alcoholics, Slagle's lawyers recounted during his 2013 parole hearing. When they divorced, Slagle's mother became involved with men who abused him. He was smoking marijuana by the time he was 12 years old. When he dropped out of school his parents didn't even notice. When he was placed into a treatment center as a teenager -- in retrospect, his last best chance -- his family failed to help with his treatment. By the time he stumbled into Pope's house that night, he was drunk, stoned and completely lost.