DaytonDailyNews.com

GROVE CITY — Nineteen years after he walked off of Ohio's death row and out of prison, Dale Johnston may finally be in a position to clear his name.

With his double murder conviction overturned, Johnston, formerly of Xenia, was freed in 1990 but never exonerated by the state.

Then in December 2008, Chester McKnight pleaded guilty to the crimes and was sentenced to 20 years to life. Another man, Kenneth Linscott, is scheduled to stand trial later this year for his alleged role.

His 1984 conviction and death sentence delivered catastrophic losses to Johnston: He lost his marriage, his freedom, his 53-acre farm and dream house, and any faith he had in the justice system.

Johnston was sentenced to death after prosecutors claimed he had an intimate relationship with his 18-year-old stepdaughter, Annette Cooper, and killed Cooper and her fiance, Todd Schultz, 19, in a jealous rage. The couple were last seen walking together on Oct. 4, 1982. Ten days later, their torsos were found floating in the Hocking River and their heads and limbs were found buried in a cornfield.

Johnston is one of 130 death row inmates in 26 states — including five from Ohio — to be released from prison since 1973 because of innocence, according to the Death Penalty Information Center of Washington, D.C. Another Ohio inmate who has always proclaimed innocence, Joe D'Ambrosio, is to be retried starting March 2. A federal judge ordered the new trial, saying prosecutors withheld evidence that probably would have led to an acquittal for D'Ambrosio in 1989 for the murder of a Cleveland Heights teenager.

Johnston will never forget walking onto death row at the state prison in Lucasville, the inmates standing at their cell doors to see the new guy.

"If you remember some of the old zombie-type movies, that's what they looked like. No expression, pale, fixed eyes. Just dead people standing. It was pitiful," said Johnston, now 75. "I made up my mind immediately I wasn't going to let that happen to me."

At Lucasville, inmates would spend 23 hours and 37 minutes a day in their cells, he said. Sometimes the air was so cold he'd see frost on the bars in the morning. Mentally ill inmates in the cells above him would scream, curse and even set themselves afire, he said.

"Many a night we'd wake up in the middle of the night with tear gas choking us to death, where they had to use tear gas to get some amount of silence," Johnston said. He added, "If I had treated any of my farm animals the way I was treated and other inmates on death row are treated, we would have been arrested for animal abuse."

State prison officials say that's just not accurate. While rules were more stringent back then, it was rare to have problems with death row, a spokeswoman said.

After his release on May 10, 1990, Johnston settled in Grove City, a suburb just south of Columbus.

In July 2000, he married a woman he met at church, and they now live in a cozy three-bedroom ranch sitting on two acres along a two-lane state route. Johnston's wife divorced him while he was in prison.

He once counted himself as a death penalty supporter. Not anymore.

"If you execute an innocent man, how do you correct that?" he said. "You say, oops you're sorry. Doesn't quite cut it."