Major Newspapers in Ohio, Washington Editorialize in Favor of Death Penalty Repeal

As state leg­is­la­tures in Ohio and Washington con­tem­plate the future of their death-penal­ty statutes, major news­pa­pers in each of the states are advo­cat­ing legislative repeal. 

On February 6, 2020, fol­low­ing a state sen­ate vote to for­mal­ize the Washington Supreme Court’s judi­cial abo­li­tion of the state’s death penal­ty, The Seattle Times edi­to­r­i­al board urged the state House of Representatives to com­plete the job. ​“The state Supreme Court has struck down Washington’s death-penal­ty law, but it remains a stain on the state’s statute books,” the Times wrote. ​“Let this Legislative ses­sion be the one a full repeal pass­es both cham­bers to ful­ly erase cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment from state law.” 

On February 9, cit­ing the ​“prac­ti­cal draw­backs and lack of prac­ti­cal ben­e­fits” of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, The Columbus Dispatch for the first time in its his­to­ry called upon Ohio leg­is­la­tors to end the death penal­ty in the Buckeye State. Given Ohio’s lethal-injec­tion dilem­ma and the myr­i­ad pol­i­cy con­cerns, the Dispatch con­clud­ed, ​“The only rea­son left for exe­cu­tion is vengeance, which is not an ele­ment of jus­tice or the prop­er busi­ness of the state. It’s time for Ohio to do away with the death penalty.” 

While both states are in the midst of pub­lic reck­on­ings with the death penal­ty, each has had unique chal­lenges with the admin­is­tra­tion of its cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment law. The two edi­to­ri­als shared some com­mon ground, crit­i­ciz­ing the biased and arbi­trary appli­ca­tion of the pol­i­cy in each of their states. The edi­to­r­i­al boards also addressed some of the unique cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment issues fac­ing their states.

In Ohio, Governor Mike DeWine (pic­tured) and House Speaker Larry Householder have both expressed con­cerns about the via­bil­i­ty and enforce­abil­i­ty of the state’s death-penal­ty law and have ques­tioned the con­tin­ued use of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. The Dispatch edi­to­r­i­al cat­a­logued a series of issues, such as cost, lack of deter­rent effect, pos­si­bil­i­ty of wrong­ful con­vic­tion, and the dif­fi­cul­ties the state has had in obtain­ing lethal injec­tion drugs, that it believes make the death penal­ty a failed pol­i­cy. The edi­to­r­i­al board also crit­i­cized state offi­cials for inac­tion ​“on most of the rec­om­men­da­tions of the Joint Task Force to Review the Administration of Ohio’s Death Penalty, which pub­lished a report in 2014 aimed at mak­ing death-penal­ty prosecutions fairer.”

The edi­tors also addressed the lethal-injec­tion prob­lems that have led Governor DeWine to grant eleven reprieves since tak­ing office and prompt­ed Householder’s grow­ing doubts about cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. After a fed­er­al judge issued an opin­ion com­par­ing the state’s lethal-injec­tion pro­to­col to water­board­ing and chem­i­cal fire, DeWine announced he would halt exe­cu­tions until a new exe­cu­tion pro­to­col was devel­oped. He lat­er announced that the state could not obtain lethal-injec­tion drugs with­out endan­ger­ing its abil­i­ty to pur­chase med­ical­ly nec­es­sary phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals for oth­er state agen­cies. With no prac­ti­cal jus­ti­fi­ca­tion remain­ing for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, the Dispatch edi­tors called for its abolition.

In October 2018, the Washington Supreme Court unan­i­mous­ly struck down the state’s death-penal­ty law, declar­ing that the pun­ish­ment had been ​“imposed in an arbi­trary and racial­ly biased man­ner.” Echoing the state court’s opin­ion, the Times edi­tors wrote that the ​“wild­ly uneven usage of the penal­ty” had pro­duced stark racial and geo­graph­ic dis­par­i­ties. The edi­tors quot­ed King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg, who said the death penal­ty ​“is sim­ply not worth the time, the mon­ey, nor the delay in the deliv­ery of justice.”

A mea­sure to remove the death penal­ty from state law has passed the Washington Senate each of the last three ses­sions, but it stalled in the House in 2018 and 2019. In response to the Washington Senate’s recent pas­sage of SB 5339, which would for­mal­ize the 2018 judi­cial abo­li­tion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, the Times urged new­ly elect­ed House Speaker Laurie Jinkins (pic­tured) to ensure that the mea­sure gets a floor vote this ses­sion. Jinkins is a co-spon­sor of the House ver­sion of the bill. ​“Now she holds the gav­el for the full cham­ber, and should push this capri­cious and biased pun­ish­ment out of state law,” the editorial states.