Ukrainian national Ivan Teleguz facing death penalty in US
Ivan Teleguz, a Ukrainian national, is scheduled to be executed in Virginia on April 13.
He maintains his innocence of the 2001 murder for which he was sent to death row in 2006, Amnesty International reports.
In 2001, Teleguz was suspected of murder of Stephanie Sipe as he was her school friend and the father of her child. A DNA test showed that the blood found at the crime scene did not belong to him. There was no progress in the investigation until 2013.
Later, several people, who faced charges with crimes, defamed Teleguz saying that he solicited the murder. In the end, Michael Hetrick, who was indicated as the hitman, confessed that Teleguz paid him USD 2,000 for murder. According to the organization, the police officers told Hetrick: “We are not going to make a prime suspect out of you… Ivan is the guy we need.”
All the defendants in the case, except for Teleguz, escaped death penalty, having made a deal. One of the witnesses also claimed the involvement of Ivan Teleguz into another willful homicide in the city of Euphrates (Pennsylvania).
In 2010, two witnesses recanted their trial testimony, saying they invented them. However, at the hearing on the admissibility of evidence in 2013, those testimonies were not heard. In July 2014, the judge ruled that Ivan Teleguz had not proved his innocence.
