According to a review by the Associated Press, at least one coun­ty in Ohio appears to be using the death penal­ty as a way of obtain­ing plea bar­gains. For exam­ple, the chief Prosecutor of Cuyahoga County (Ohio), Bill Mason, orig­i­nal­ly announced his intent to seek the death penal­ty against six men who were indict­ed days after a drug-relat­ed slay­ing in sub­ur­ban Cleveland. However, plea bar­gains were grant­ed in all of the cas­es, and four of the men received pro­ba­tion and nev­er even went to prison. The case cost Cuyahoga County tax­pay­ers more than $120,000 because it orig­i­nal­ly involved cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. From 2009 to 2011, Cuyahoga County indict­ed 135 defen­dants on charges that could have result­ed in a death sen­tence. However, only two of those offend­ers were sent to death row. The rest either plead­ed guilty, usu­al­ly with the death penal­ty charges with­drawn, or were con­vict­ed but not sen­tenced to death. Joe Deters, a pros­e­cu­tor in Hamilton County, Ohio, said, ​“To use the death penal­ty to force a plea bar­gain, I think it’s uneth­i­cal to do that.” Ohio state pub­lic defend­er Tim Young agreed, say­ing that charg­ing less­er offens­es as death penal­ty cas­es ​“seems like a wild­ly dan­ger­ous use” of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Across the state, most pros­e­cu­tors are using the death penal­ty far more spar­ing­ly. Mason said he seeks the death penal­ty to ​“equal­ly apply the law.” 

An American Bar Association study of Ohio’s death penal­ty also cit­ed the high num­ber of cap­i­tal indict­ments in Cuyahoga County. 

(A. Welsh-Huggins, ​“Critics accuse Ohio pros­e­cu­tor of using death penal­ty threat as bar­gain­ing chip,” Associated Press, May 16, 2012). See Arbitrariness and lis­ten to DPIC’s pod­cast on Arbitrariness.

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