By Josh Jarman
The Columbus Dispatch
COLUMBUS, Ohio — Jonna Sharp said the Ohio Parole Board’s decision yesterday to keep a convicted cop killer in prison was the best news she had heard from the panel in more than a decade.
Sharp is the daughter of Coshocton Police Officer Sanford Stanley Jr., who was gunned down in the town’s small police station in 1976. His killer, 66-year-old Paul McNeely, was sentenced to death for the crime.
That sentence was commuted to life in prison in 1978, when the state’s death penalty was struck down as unconstitutional.
McNeely went before the parole board yesterday for the fourth time. The board again recommended he stay in prison and set his next parole hearing for Feb. 1, 2021, a spokeswoman for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections said.
As she has whenever McNeely was eligible for parole, Sharp spent about six months before the hearing trying to raise support for keeping her father’s killer behind bars. She gathered letters and signatures on an online petition and appeared before the board in January to plead with them to keep McNeely in prison.
“I was praying for this,” Sharp said. “I think dad would be proud.”
Copyright 2011 The Columbus Dispatch
All Rights Reserved