After Five-Year Execution Pause, Ohio Leaders Question Value of Death Penalty

A pro­posed death penal­ty repeal bill in the Ohio leg­is­la­ture is draw­ing atten­tion to the state’s five-year pause on exe­cu­tions, and lead­ing state offi­cials from both par­ties to ques­tion whether the death penal­ty sys­tem is work­ing. Ohio Attorney General David Yost (pic­tured) summed up the sit­u­a­tion by say­ing, ​“This sys­tem sat­is­fies nobody. Those who oppose the death penal­ty want it abol­ished alto­geth­er, not tick­ing away like a time bomb that might or might not explode. Those who sup­port the death penal­ty want it to be fair, time­ly and effec­tive. Neither side is get­ting what it wants while the state goes on point­less­ly burn­ing through enor­mous taxpayer resources.” 

Governor Mike DeWine, who helped write Ohio’s death penal­ty law dur­ing his time as a state sen­a­tor, has issued more than 40 reprieves over the last five years. His spokesper­son said that the governor’s stance hasn’t changed since a December 2020 inter­view in which he said he has become ​“much more skep­ti­cal about whether it meets the cri­te­ria that was cer­tain­ly in my mind when I vot­ed for the death penal­ty, and that was that it in fact did deter crime, which to me is the moral justification.

Representative Adam Miller, the Democratic spon­sor of the repeal bill in the House, expressed sen­ti­ments in line with Gov. DeWine and AG Yost, say­ing in a September press con­fer­ence that, ​“The death penal­ty is a failed pub­lic pol­i­cy and must be abol­ished.” The bill’s Republican co-spon­sor, Representative Jean Schmidt, said she oppos­es the death penal­ty on pro-life grounds.

Ohio’s pause on exe­cu­tions is part of a nation­al trend away from the death penal­ty. In 2023, only five states car­ried out exe­cu­tions. The state has not imposed a death sen­tence since 2020, as death sen­tences nation­al­ly have declined sig­nif­i­cant­ly since their peak in mid-1990s. Franklin County Prosecutor Gary Tyack said, ​“I haven’t seen a case where I think a jury would return a death ver­dict in recent his­to­ry, and because that’s the sit­u­a­tion, I don’t see the need of tak­ing on the huge cost involved in a death case.”