On August 4, Ohio death row inmate Billy Slagle was found hanged in his prison cell, three days before he was sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed. Slagle did not know that pros­e­cu­tors had recent­ly revealed that their office had been pre­pared to offer a plea deal to avoid a death sen­tence at the time of his tri­al 26 years ago. That deal was not con­veyed to Slagle by his attor­neys. This new infor­ma­tion was part of a request for a stay of exe­cu­tion sent to the Ohio Supreme Court and unop­posed by the pros­e­cu­tor’s office. Slagle appar­ent­ly took his own life, not know­ing of this devel­op­ment. Governor John Kasich declined to com­mute Slagle’s death sen­tence last month, despite the rec­om­men­da­tion from pros­e­cu­tor Tim McGinty, head of the office that pros­e­cut­ed Slagle, that his sen­tence be reduced to life without parole.

(K. Palmer, ​“Ohio death row inmate found hanged days before exe­cu­tion,” Reuters, August 5, 2013; A. Johnson, ​“Death-row inmate who killed self didn’t know of new hope,” Columbus Dispatch, Aug. 6, 2013). ). See Death Row and Arbitrariness.

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