DPIC’s New Podcast Series, Rethinking Public Safety, Debuts with a Discussion with Former Ohio Attorney General Jim Petro

As a state leg­is­la­tor in 1981, Jim Petro (pic­tured) sup­port­ed a bill to rein­state Ohio​’s death penal­ty after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the state’s pre­vi­ous cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment statute. Later, as Ohio Attorney General, he super­vised 19 exe­cu­tions in the state. Since then, his views have changed and he recent­ly co-authored an op-ed in the Columbus Dispatch urg­ing the leg­is­la­ture to repeal the state’s death penalty. 

In the April 2021 episode of the Death Penalty Information Center pod­cast Discussions with DPIC, Petro speaks with DPIC Senior Director of Research and Special Projects Ngozi Ndulue about how learn­ing about wrong­ful con­vic­tions and the high cost of the death penal­ty changed his opin­ion on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. The inter­view is the first in a new series of DPIC pod­casts on Rethinking Public Safety. This series will fea­ture inter­views with pub­lic offi­cials in var­i­ous pub­lic safe­ty fields dis­cussing the evo­lu­tion of their views on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment and how their pro­fes­sion­al expe­ri­ences influ­enced their thinking.

Issues of inno­cence and gov­ern­ment fal­li­bil­i­ty played a major role in the evo­lu­tion of Petro’s views on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. During his tenure as Attorney General, he was involved in the exon­er­a­tion of Clarence Elkins, wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed of rape and mur­der and sen­tenced to life. Elkins was sub­se­quent­ly exon­er­at­ed by DNA evi­dence that cleared him and iden­ti­fied the actu­al per­pe­tra­tor. Petro called Elkins’ case ​“the most eye-open­ing expe­ri­ence of my life,” and told Ndulue that it inspired him to sup­port leg­is­la­tion to reduce the chances of wrong­ful con­vic­tions and to work pro bono for the Ohio Innocence Project.

“In my years as a state leg­is­la­tor, as state audi­tor, as the Attorney General of Ohio, I always want­ed to make sure that gov­ern­ment was doing things right, that we weren’t func­tion­ing in a fash­ion that made a lot of mis­takes,” he says. ​“And so when I learned that the jus­tice sys­tem was prone to error, I real­ly want­ed to con­tin­ue to do what­ev­er I could to make that bet­ter.” Before the Elkins case, he says, ​“I nev­er real­ly thought that the sys­tem would fail so mis­er­ably as to con­vict and incar­cer­ate for many years a per­son absolute­ly inno­cent of the crime.” He con­tin­ued look­ing into the issue and co-authored a book, False Justice: Eight Myths That Convict the Innocent, explor­ing the caus­es of wrongful convictions.

In the pod­cast, Petro describes his ear­ly assump­tions about the accu­ra­cy of the sys­tem and how they changed. He sup­port­ed the death penal­ty as a state leg­is­la­tor, he says, because “[a]t that time I did­n’t even sus­pect that when death penal­ties were hand­ed down, it actu­al­ly could have been in error. And I pre­sumed that the sys­tem so tight­ly han­dled the risk of an error, that a con­vic­tion error in a death penal­ty case, it’s almost impos­si­ble to imag­ine. I lat­er began to learn that that was not the case.”

Petro con­trasts his assump­tions with his under­stand­ing of the sys­tem now, after decades more expe­ri­ence: ​“The recog­ni­tion that I have now that, you know, in the great scheme of things, the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem does make mis­takes that are not cor­rect­ed on appeal. There are fac­tu­al mis­takes, and they result in wrong­ful con­vic­tions. In spite of the fact that the case is appealed all the way up, even that may not change things. And so, if that is true — which I believe it is — then there are indi­vid­u­als who have been exe­cut­ed who are total­ly inno­cent of crimes. I’m sure of it.”

Petro and Ndulue also cov­er the ques­tions of deter­rence and costs. Petro says his expe­ri­ence as a pros­e­cu­tor showed him the death penal­ty does lit­tle to affect crime. ​“I don’t think the death penal­ty is a deter­rent for vio­lent or seri­ous crime,” he states. He says he believes that the cost of the death penal­ty has been a major dri­ver of chang­ing pub­lic opin­ion. ​“So often, vot­ers would say to me, ​‘Well, the death penal­ty is good, because you know, I don’t want to keep them in jail for all those years and have to pay for them.’ And I would have to explain to them, it’s much cheap­er to keep a con­vict­ed crim­i­nal who is con­vict­ed of a seri­ous, max­i­mum penal­ty offense. It’s much cheap­er to keep the keep them in prison for life, than to go through the process, ulti­mate­ly executing them.”