Former Ohio Governor, Two Attorneys General Call for Repeal of State’s Death Penalty

The move­ment to repeal cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in Ohio has gained addi­tion­al steam as for­mer Governor Robert Taft and for­mer state attor­neys gen­er­al Jim Petro and Lee Fisher (pic­tured, left to right) called on the Ohio state leg­is­la­ture to end the state’s death penalty.

The three for­mer state offi­cials served togeth­er in the leg­is­la­ture when Ohio adopt­ed its cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment statute in 1981 and lat­er played key roles in car­ry­ing it out. In a March 9, 2021 guest col­umn in The Columbus Dispatch, they called Ohio’s death-penal­ty sys­tem ​“bro­ken, cost­ly and unjust.” The cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment law they helped to adopt and enforce ​“fails to pro­tect or aid us in any way. It is time to retire Ohio’s death penal­ty,” they wrote. 

Taft served two terms as Ohio’s gov­er­nor, from January 1999 to January 2007, dur­ing which he presided over the first 24 exe­cu­tions under the 1981 death-penal­ty law. He com­mut­ed one death sen­tence dur­ing his time in office. Petro, like Taft, a Republican, served as Attorney General from 2003 to 2007, dur­ing which 19 of those exe­cu­tions were car­ried out. Fisher, a Democrat, served one term as Ohio attor­ney gen­er­al from 1991 to 1995, defend­ing death sen­tences imposed under the statute, and one term as Lt. Governor, from 2007 to 2011. 

“We had the best of inten­tions,” the three wrote, ​“but in this case, we built it, and the expect­ed ben­e­fits did not come.”

The for­mer offi­cials’ guest col­umn comes as leg­is­la­tors in the state launch a bipar­ti­san effort to repeal Ohio’s death penal­ty. They join for­mer Ohio Supreme Court Justice Paul Pfeifer, who, as Chairman of the Ohio Senate Judiciary Chairman in 1981 was a prin­ci­pal archi­tect of Ohio’s death-penal­ty statute, in call­ing for its abo­li­tion.

Taft, Petro, and Fisher address and rebut the argu­ments fre­quent­ly advanced in sup­port of the death penal­ty. First, they write, “[d]eath is not a supe­ri­or deter­rent.” They note that the National Academy of Sciences, after review­ing all the stud­ies, found no cred­i­ble evi­dence that the death penal­ty is a deter­rent and, they add, ​“chiefs of police agree that oth­er less-cost­ly mea­sures are far more effec­tive at reduc­ing violent crime.”

They also respond to the con­tention that the death penal­ty pro­vides a ser­vice for fam­i­ly mem­bers of mur­der vic­tims. ​“We have learned that the death penal­ty does not sup­port the fam­i­lies of mur­der vic­tims, but instead pro­longs their pain and impairs the heal­ing process,” they write. Far from aid­ing fam­i­ly mem­bers, they write, cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment ​“diverts funds that could and should go to true sup­port ser­vices, includ­ing grief coun­sel­ing, men­tal health ser­vices and finan­cial sup­port; and to inves­tiga­tive efforts that solve the crimes that dam­aged oth­er vic­tims’ families.” 

Taft, Petro, and Fisher also argue that Ohio’s admin­is­tra­tion of the death penal­ty fails to pro­tect the inno­cent. ​“We have learned that our death penal­ty sys­tem con­victs and near­ly exe­cutes the inno­cent,” they write. ​“For every six Ohioans we have exe­cut­ed under the 1981 law, one inno­cent Ohioan has lan­guished on death row.” 

The three also observe that Ohio’s death penal­ty is taint­ed by racial dis­crim­i­na­tion and geo­graph­i­cal arbi­trari­ness. “[T]he death penal­ty is not applied fair­ly,” they write, and ​“race and place play an intol­er­a­ble role in decid­ing who lives and who dies.”

The authors also rebut the myth that the death penal­ty is cheap­er than the state’s life-sen­tenc­ing alter­na­tive. “[T]he death penal­ty costs far more than our oth­er option of life impris­on­ment with­out parole,” they explain. ​“The Ohio Legislative Service Commission has report­ed that the total amount expend­ed in a cap­i­tal case is between 2.5 and 5 times as much as a non-cap­i­tal life with­out parole case, and that in some states a cap­i­tal case exceeds the cost of a life impris­on­ment case by $1 mil­lion to $3 mil­lion per case.” Even if it worked, they write, ​“the death penal­ty may well be a lux­u­ry we can no longer afford.”

Finally, the three offi­cials note that pub­lic sen­ti­ment towards cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment has changed, just as their views, too, have evolved. ​“We believed [the death penal­ty] was what Ohioans want­ed, and we were right about that then, but forty years lat­er, we are no longer,” they write. Seeing that 59% of Ohioans, “[a] strong bipar­ti­san major­i­ty … now sup­port replac­ing the death penal­ty with life in prison with­out parole,” the for­mer Governor and attor­neys gen­er­al agree, ​“It is time to retire Ohio’s death penalty.”