Columbus Dispatch – by Theodore Decker
Thirty years after Denison University student Laura Carter became an unintended casualty of a Columbus gang war, one of the men convicted in her death learned he soon will be a free man.
The Ohio Parole Board decided yesterday that Gordon Newlin, 60, will be released from state prison on June 18 after serving 25 years of a possible life sentence for his role in the killing of Carter on the Near East Side on April 17, 1982.
In 1987, he was convicted of aggravated murder, felonious assault and conspiracy.
Newlin was not at yesterday’s parole hearing, but a group of family members and friends rejoiced at the news that he would be coming home. Several hugged. His sister wept with joy.
The timing of the hearing, which fell on the 30th anniversary of Carter’s death, was a coincidence.
Supporters had argued that Newlin was a changed man who had found God, bettered himself during his years in prison and paid his debt to society.
Absent from the hearing were Carter’s parents, who for years had not wavered in their push for justice for their daughter. Both are dead.
That left Franklin County Prosecutor Ron O’Brien, former prosecutor and current Common Pleas Judge Pat Sheeran and retired Columbus homicide detective Edward Kallay Jr. to try to block Newlin’s release.
Carter’s parents, who lived in Wayne, Pa., were in central Ohio for Denison’s parents weekend and were taking their daughter and three friends to dinner in Columbus when she was shot.
Carter was in the back seat of her father’s rental car on E. Broad Street near East High School when a stray bullet struck her in the chest.
Her death stunned Columbus and inspired Grammy Award-winning singer Christopher Cross to pen his 1983 hit Think of Laura.
The bullet that took Carter’s life had been fired in an ongoing feud between a local gang and outsiders from Cleveland who wanted a piece of the criminal action in Columbus. The shooting was masterminded by Norman Whiteside and was not a spur-of-the-moment crime of passion, investigators said.
“This was a lay-in-wait ambush,” Kallay said.
Newlin was among the local members who ambushed the outsiders. His brother, Paul Ricardo Newlin, also was convicted in the case but was released several years ago. Whiteside remains in prison.
A fourth man, James “Bubbles” Smith, was acquitted despite accounts that he might have been the one who fired the fatal shot.
Kort W. Gatterdam, Gordon Newlin’s attorney, said his client had more than paid his societal debt, noting that he has excelled in prison and shown remorse.
Arguing that the Newlin brothers deliberately led investigators astray in a stonewalling attempt that took years to sort out, O’Brien maintained that what the board saw out of Gordon Newlin was “ self-interest, not remorse.”
“For three years we were confounded by all the lies,” Kallay said.
“In terms of sentencing parity, Gordon Newlin is precisely where he should be,” Sheeran said. “ In prison.”
Countering their argument was Newlin’s clean prison record and strong support network, Gatterdam said.
“Mr. Newlin has made fantastic changes in his life,” said Cameron Gott, who met Newlin while doing prison-ministry work.
Newlin’s sister, Sandra Johnson, said she had a place for her brother to live and a job for him at the family’s H. Johnson Bar-B-Q on Lockbourne Road.
Another friend and former inmate, Max Erwin, said he had become a successful businessman after his own release and was willing to pay Newlin an annual salary of $48,000 to work at a car dealership.
“He’ll be no burden to society,” Erwin said.
“He is not the man that he was 25 years ago,” Gatterdam said. “We can’t pull back the hands of time. Gordon Newlin took part in a terrible crime, and he knows that.”
http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2012/04/18/students-convicted-killer-wins-parole.html
Maybe they shot her for looking too much like John Kerry.
And anyway, isn’t 20 or 25 years the standard sentence for murder?