Seal of the Ohio Senate

The board of Cleveland​.com and The Plain Dealer pub­lished an edi­to­r­i­al sup­port­ing the pas­sage of Senate Bill 101 that would abol­ish the death penal­ty in Ohio. “[T]he time is right,” states the piece, for the General Assembly to come togeth­er to end cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in Ohio. Its inequities are man­i­fest, its bar­barism is clear — and its time has passed.”

According to the edi­to­r­i­al, Senate Bill 101 cur­rent­ly has bipar­ti­san sup­port among more than a third of the state Senate. …[and] runs the polit­i­cal spec­trum from con­ser­v­a­tive to lib­er­al and is geo­graph­i­cal­ly bal­anced among Ohio’s regions.”

The edi­to­r­i­al points out that the board in the past has argued against the death-penal­ty on many grounds — from prac­ti­cal­i­ties and costs to the basic unfair­ness of a penal­ty that dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly tar­get­ed minori­ties and the poor… We’ve also not­ed the abso­lutism of a pun­ish­ment from which there can be no return, even when lat­er evi­dence, includ­ing DNA evi­dence, exon­er­ates the per­son who’s already been put to death.”

The board states, The death penal­ty is not just bar­bar­ic but has become, prac­ti­cal­ly speak­ing, all but unwork­able in Ohio.” Due to the dif­fi­cul­ty in obtain­ing the nec­es­sary drugs for lethal injec­tions, the state has not car­ried out an exe­cu­tion since 2018, and Governor Mike DeWine has stat­ed that he does not fore­see future exe­cu­tions using this method. In the recent­ly pub­lished 2022 Capital Crimes Report, Attorney General Dave Yost, a death-penal­ty pro­po­nent, describes the prac­tice as a bro­ken cap­i­tal-pun­ish­ment system.”

Citation Guide
Sources

Editorial Board, cleve​land​.com and The Plain Dealer, Ohio should abol­ish the death penal­ty — now: edi­to­r­i­al, Cleveland​.com, April 142023