Second Ohio Prisoner Taken Off Death Row Under New Serious Mental Illness Law

A sec­ond Ohio death-row pris­on­er has been resen­tenced to life with­out parole under a new state law that makes indi­vid­u­als who were seri­ous­ly men­tal­ly ill at the time of their crime inel­i­gi­ble for the death penalty. 

Donald Ketterer, who was sen­tenced to death in Butler County in February 2004, was trans­ferred from death row in Ohio’s Chillicothe Correctional Institution on October 6, 2021 to a state prison in Warren County after a Butler County Court of Common Pleas rul­ing in September that vacat­ed his death sen­tence. ​“Ketterer suf­fered from bipo­lar dis­or­der on Feb. 24, 2003, when Lawrence Sanders was mur­dered,” vis­it­ing Judge James Brogan wrote, ​“and because of his bipo­lar dis­or­der, lacked sub­stan­tial capac­i­ty to con­form his con­duct to the require­ments of law.”

The Ohio leg­is­la­ture vot­ed in December 2020 to exempt indi­vid­u­als whose seri­ous men­tal ill­ness ​“sig­nif­i­cant­ly impaired the person’s capac­i­ty to exer­cise ratio­nal judg­ment” at the time of the mur­der in either ​“con­form­ing [his] con­duct to the require­ments of law” or ​“appre­ci­at­ing the nature, con­se­quences, or wrong­ful­ness of [his] con­duct.” The pro­pos­al des­ig­nat­ed cer­tain ill­ness as seri­ous men­tal ill­ness­es, includ­ing schiz­o­phre­nia, schizoaf­fec­tive dis­or­der, bipo­lar dis­or­der, and delusional disorder. 

Governor Mike DeWine signed the bill on January 9, 2021 and it became law on April 12. Ketterer’s lawyers then filed a post-con­vic­tion motion in July seek­ing to over­turn his death sen­tence, detail­ing his long his­to­ry of men­tal ill­ness. On June 23, 2021, David Braden became the first Ohio death-row pris­on­er to have his death sen­tence vacat­ed because of seri­ous mental illness.