Examining the Implications of Uncontested Prosecutor Elections in Ohio

In a new arti­cle from Bolts, jour­nal­ist Daniel Nichanian writes about the dearth of can­di­dates in Ohio’s coun­ty pros­e­cu­tor elec­tions. ​“Of the 27 coun­ties with more than 100,000 res­i­dents in Ohio, 70 per­cent drew just one can­di­date” to run for elec­tion or reelec­tion as coun­ty pros­e­cu­tor. Only 15 of Ohio’s 88 pros­e­cu­tor elec­tions this year drew mul­ti­ple can­di­dates by the December dead­line, accord­ing to Bolts’ research: ​“This means that the vast major­i­ty of the state’s pros­e­cut­ing attor­neys are run­ning unop­posed this year; Bolts has con­firmed that no more than one can­di­date has filed to run in 73 of the 88 counties.” 

Uncontested elec­tions can sug­gest sta­bil­i­ty and sat­is­fac­tion with the incum­bent, but they also prompt a dis­cus­sion about the dynam­ics of elec­toral com­pe­ti­tion and have broad­er impli­ca­tions for demo­c­ra­t­ic account­abil­i­ty. For exam­ple, Bolts reports that although many Ohio pros­e­cu­tors have faced seri­ous mis­con­duct charges, there have been no con­se­quences from state offi­cials. These same pros­e­cu­tors are run­ning unop­posed in upcom­ing elec­tions, pro­vid­ing no incen­tives to change their poli­cies or inves­ti­gate their own mistakes.

In their 2021 study, Ronald F. Wright, Jeffrey L. Yates, and Carissa Byrne Hessick describe a grow­ing inter­est in and atten­tion to the roles of pros­e­cu­tors, reflect­ing broad­er changes in the polit­i­cal and social land­scape sur­round­ing crim­i­nal jus­tice issues, which they argue can con­tribute to strength­en­ing democ­ra­cy. According to Gregory DeAngelo and Bryan C. McCannon, sev­er­al states are recon­sid­er­ing the prac­tice of list­ing polit­i­cal par­ty affil­i­a­tions on bal­lots. Among oth­er obser­va­tions, they note that more par­ti­san can­di­dates tend to spend more mon­ey on the cam­paign trail due to fund­ing avail­abil­i­ty, disadvantaging challengers. 

There are many rea­sons explain­ing the lack ofchal­lengers, includ­ing fundrais­ing pres­sures, ger­ry­man­der­ing, gen­er­al elec­tion fatigue, and the increas­ing polar­iza­tion of vot­ers with­in the polit­i­cal land­scape, as Mr. Nichanian explains. There are also racial and gen­der bias­es that affect races, and the pos­si­bil­i­ty of retal­i­a­tion, all of which may deter poten­tial can­di­dates. Whatever the rea­son, when incum­bents are not chal­lenged, estab­lished prac­tices remain in place and the account­abil­i­ty that is essen­tial in a healthy demo­c­ra­t­ic process suf­fers. Political sci­en­tists cat­e­go­rize uncon­test­ed elec­tions as a symp­tom of what is often labeled ​‘demo­c­ra­t­ic ero­sion.’ Nancy Bermeo, a polit­i­cal sci­en­tist work­ing at Princeton and Oxford uni­ver­si­ties, defines demo­c­ra­t­ic ero­sion, or ​‘demo­c­ra­t­ic back­slid­ing,’ as the weak­en­ing of the polit­i­cal insti­tu­tions that under­pin the exist­ing democ­ra­cy and/​or its checks and balances. 

The cur­rent occu­pant of Ohio’s Trumbull County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, Dennis Watkins, has been in office since 1984 and remains unchal­lenged in this elec­tion cycle. As report­ed in Bolts, Mr. Watkins has nev­er faced a chal­lenger in any of his oth­er nine reelec­tion bids. Despite an Ohio law exclud­ing peo­ple with seri­ous men­tal ill­ness from death penal­ty eli­gi­bil­i­ty, he has fought to keep peo­ple with men­tal ill­ness on death row. In 2019, he also defend­ed a pros­e­cu­tor in his office who fre­quent­ly mocked defen­dants with crude pub­lic jokes, dis­miss­ing ethics concerns. 

Mr. Watkins, along with his Assistant, Christopher Becker, have tena­cious­ly pur­sued cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in their juris­dic­tion— assert­ing that ​“the death penal­ty should not be viewed as a deter­rent, but as pun­ish­ment for the most vio­lent and destruc­tive mem­bers of soci­ety.” Andre ​“Kokomo” Williams appealed the death sen­tence secured by Mr. Watkins in 1991, argu­ing that his intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty made him inel­i­gi­ble for the death penal­ty. On December 11, 2023, the Eleventh District Court of Appeals in Ohio agreed. In her 51-page deci­sion, District Judge Mary Jane Trapp wrote that ​“the tri­al court exclud­ed and/​or failed to address evi­dence that sup­port a find­ing Mr. Williams is intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled” (Mahoning Matters, 2023). Prosecutor Watkins stat­ed that, regard­less, he intends to ​‘under­take an appeal to the Ohio Supreme Court seek­ing to have the tri­al court’s opin­ion rein­stat­ed,’ which would reopen the path to Mr. Williams’s execution. 

According to the DPIC Death Penalty Census Database, since Mr. Watkins assumed office in 1984, 11 peo­ple were sen­tenced to death, three of them were exe­cut­ed, and one was grant­ed relief. As stat­ed on the Trumbull County Prosecutor’s web­site: ​“Mr. Watkins has suc­cess­ful­ly pros­e­cut­ed 46 mur­der tri­als, and has per­son­al­ly obtained con­vic­tions which result­ed in nine (9) of the twelve (12) Trumbull County mur­der­ers who have been sen­tenced to death under the Ohio law.” As the charts below illus­trate, although Trumbull County ranks eighth in death penal­ty sen­tences among Ohio coun­ties, when adjust­ed by pop­u­la­tion size, it ranks as the fourth high­est, a dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly high rate of death sen­tenc­ing rel­a­tive to its pop­u­la­tion. This data may sug­gest a notable incli­na­tion towards the use of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment dur­ing Mr. Watkins’s tenure.