On October 8, 2026, the Eleventh District Court of Appeals heard oral argument on Tyrone Noling’s appeal from a trial court ruling denying his motion to conduct DNA testing, using technology that has emerged in recent years, on physical crime scene evidence that could exonerate him. Brian Howe of the Ohio Innocence Project argued the appeal on behalf of Mr. Noling. An audio recording of the oral argument can be found here. Mr. Noling’s legal team expects that the Eleventh District will issue its decision in the coming months.
For many years, Mr. Noling has been fighting in the courts to obtain access to key physical evidence for DNA testing, evidence which could confirm that one or more alternative suspects committed the 1990 murder of the Hartigs and therefore exonerate Mr. Noling. Recent developments in DNA science prompted Mr. Noling to seek DNA testing at his own expense of .25 caliber cartridge casings and ring boxes recovered from the Hartigs’ home in 1990. Mr. Noling brought his motion under Criminal Rule of Procedure 42(C), which requires capital defendants be granted full and complete access to all evidence in possession of the State.
The Portage County Prosecutor’s office has steadfastly resisted DNA testing over the decades that Mr. Noling has been attempting to prove his innocence. The Prosecutor opposed Mr. Noling’s recently filed Rule 42(c) motion for DNA testing by relying on a nearly 15-year-old report from the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigations that determined—based on technology in existence then—that the evidence in question was contaminated and unsuitable for testing, and a 2014 court order denying a request for testing at the State’s expense under a different statute while resting on the contamination opinion. On March 25, 2026, the Portage County Court of Common Pleas issued an order denying Mr. Noling’s motion. The Court of Common Pleas endorsed the Prosecutor’s positions and rested on the court’s 2014 order denying DNA testing under the different statute. The 2026 order did not even mention Rule 42(C), under which Mr. Noling brought his motion. Moreover, the order denied relief despite that (1) the undisputed evidence, namely an expert affidavit submitted by Mr. Noling’s team, showed that the technology has significantly improved in the intervening years, and (2) Rule 42(C), which did not even exist in 2014, allows defendants in death penalty cases far greater access to evidence than the statutes in existence at the time of the 2014 order.
Mr. Noling’s legal team promptly filed a notice of appeal with the Eleventh District and sought to litigate the appeal on an expedited basis. The appeals court denied an expedited appeal, but Noling nonetheless pursued the appeal with dispatch filing an opening brief on June 22, 2026. The Eleventh District set the matter for oral argument before briefing was even complete.