NETWORK DEBUT: New A&E Show Features UC Law Students Working on Unique Case 

Three University of Cincinnati law students will be featured on the A&E television network this week, in the pilot episode for

a new series called "Innocence Files."

Adam Eckstein, Jeanelle Gonzalez-Kelly and Ryan Kelsey – all third-year students at the college this year – served as an Ohio Innocence Project team last year developing the case of inmate Glenn Tinney. The story of building Tinney’s case will be told in the pilot episode of "Innocence Files," scheduled to run nationally on Thursday, Sept. 20, at 11 p.m. Eastern Time.

The case is an extremely rare event, even by Innocence Project standards – the party that came to the Ohio Innocence Project seeking its help was not the inmate himself, but the police department in the jurisdiction where the crime was committed.

Tinney was convicted of a 1988 murder in Mansfield, Ohio. The conviction was based on his confession to the crime. The problem, though, is that Tinney suffers from mental difficulties and is prone to false confessions. His confession was riddled with factual inaccuracies when compared to the actual circumstances of the crime. That didn’t stop the Richland County prosecutor’s office from accepting Tinney’s plea, but for the Mansfield Police Department, the case was always considered to have remained open.

When a new investigator, Det. Eric Bosko, took over the case for the Mansfield Police, he brought the case to the UC College of Law and the Ohio Innocence Project.

"Glenn’s case came to the Innocence Project in a unique way," says Adam Eckstein. "The Mansfield Police have sensed that there was an injustice in this case for quite a while. It’s an unresolved matter, and they’d like to resolve it."

In almost every case they work on, Innocence Projects across the country usually find themselves on the opposite side of the fence from the police. Not so in this case.

"Being able to work with them has offered incredible insight for us," adds Ryan Kelsey. "The starting point on an Innocence Project investigation is usually a two-page handwritten letter from an inmate, not boxes of case information that have been built up through the years by the police."

Eckstein, Gonzalez-Kelly and Kelsey were able to dig through every aspect of the case, and have found multiple, glaring problems in Tinney’s confession to murdering Mansfield waterbed store owner Ted White.

Ohio Innocence Project Faculty Director Mark Godsey says that at least 65 factual errors have been found in the case. "If you go back to the records, his attorney at the time only billed for a small number of hours on the case," says Godsey, indicating just how perfunctory the matter of sending Tinney to prison was.

"There were so many inconsistencies between Glenn’s false confession and the actual facts of the case," says Kelsey. "For instance, a big example was that Glenn said that the victim was beat in the head with a large pipe wrench, and that he hit him one or two times. But the autopsy shows that the victim was hit with a small object, something like the size of a hammer, and that there a large number of blows."

"One of his mental problems is almost a need to confess sometimes," Eckstein says of Tinney.

"His facts tend to be way off," Eckstein says. "And that’s what the police noted right away. Forensic science can now piece together what happens in crimes in a more accurate way, and his confession never has matched the facts."

Gonzalez-Kelly says that when Tinney confessed, his life was at a particularly low point. All he asked authorities for was a radio and a little money, because he thought with those things, his life would be better in prison than if he were free.

"At the time he pled guilty, Glenn's life wasn’t going well," Gonzalez-Kelly says. "This is what makes his story so sad. We all make bad decisions, but Glenn's have cost him so much of his life. This case is a wake-up call to anyone who wants to work as an attorney, myself included. This case reminds us that the system isn't perfect, but with responsible lawyering, even people like Glenn Tinney, who the world has all but forgotten, can have a second chance."

Tinney remains in prison in the Pickaway Correctional Institution. Appeals in his case are expected to be filed during the upcoming school year, and "Innocence Files" will continue to follow and document the case.