Staff reports
cleveland.com
CLEVELAND, Ohio — The Ohio Parole Board has refused to release Douglas Prade, the former Akron police captain convicted of killing his wife in 1997.
The board, in a decision released Friday, noted that Prade, 79, will come up for parole again in 2033. The panel said Prade lacked the programming “to address his risk to reoffend.”
“The brutality and callousness of his crime outweighs any positive parole suitability factors in his case,” the board wrote in its decision. “The board considers additional incarceration appropriate.”
Prade has been serving a life sentence in the Madison Correctional Institution for the slaying of Dr. Margo Prade outside her medical office. A Summit County jury convicted him in 1998 of aggravated murder and other charges.
During the trial, prosecutors portrayed Prade as a jealous, obsessed man who tapped his wife’s phones and videotaped her in public. The couple divorced several months before Margo Prade’s death Nov. 26, 1997.
Since then, his case has moved back and forth between trial courts and appellate courts. He was sentenced to life in prison after the jury’s verdict. In January 2013 , then-Summit County Common Pleas Judge Judy Hunter exonerated him based on DNA evidence.
In her ruling, she said test results made on Margo Prade’s lab coat and other items, as well as evidence from the trial, had excluded Douglas Prade and convinced her that no reasonable juror would convict Prade.
The DNA did not belong to her ex-husband, Hunter said. Prade was freed from prison and spent 18 months in Akron repairing a home and living as a free man.
The 9th Ohio District Court of Appeals overturned Hunter’s exoneration in October 2014 and reinstated the conviction, saying there was overwhelming evidence that Prade killed his wife.
“Given the enormity of the evidence in support of Prade’s guilt and the fact that the meaningfulness of the DNA exclusion results is far from clear, this court cannot conclude that Prade set forth clear and convincing evidence of actual innocence,” appellate Judge Beth Whitmore wrote in a unanimous opinion.
Prosecutors cited testimony and other evidence that Prade was a serial stalker, that he benefited from Margo Prade’s life insurance policy and that he repeatedly threatened to kill her.
The Ohio Supreme Court refused to hear Prade’s appeal of the appellate court’s verdict.
Cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer reached out to Margo Prade’s family members for comment. It also sought speak with attorneys from the Ohio Innocence Project , which worked to exonerate Douglas Prade .
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