A new book, No Winners Here Tonight: Race, Politics, and Geography in One of the Country’s Busiest Death Penalty States, by Ohio jour­nal­ist Andrew Welsh-Huggins, explores the his­to­ry of Ohio’s death penal­ty and rais­es ques­tions of fair­ness by exam­in­ing the state’s expe­ri­ence with cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Citing his­tor­i­cal exam­ples, the author argues that the death penal­ty has been car­ried out in an arbi­trary fash­ion from its ear­li­est days and has fall­en short of the state’s stan­dard of exe­cut­ing only the ​“worst of the worst.” This book is the first com­pre­hen­sive study of the his­to­ry of the death penal­ty in Ohio. (The state has about 188 peo­ple on death row and has car­ried out 28 exe­cu­tions since the death penal­ty was rein­stat­ed in the 1970s. In 2008, Ohio was the only state out­side the south to car­ry out an execution.)

(A. Welsh-Huggins, ​“No Winners Here Tonight,” Ohio Univ. Press, 2009). The book may be pur­chased here. See History of the Death Penalty and Books.

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