NEW VOICES: Op-Eds Highlight Opposing Viewpoints on Ohio’s Death Penalty

In light of the five-year anniver­sary of Ohio’s last exe­cu­tion, two op-eds high­light­ing dif­fer­ent views about the death penal­ty were pub­lished in the Dayton Daily News. On August 1, Louis Tobin (pic­tured right), Executive Director of the Ohio Prosecuting Attorneys Association, expressed his sup­port for the death penal­ty, and two days lat­er, Reverend Dr. Crystal Walker (pic­tured left), co-chair of Ohioans to Stop Executions, expressed her sup­port for alter­na­tives to the death penalty. 

As the moth­er of a son who was shot and killed in 2013, Dr. Walker shared her per­spec­tive as a victim’s fam­i­ly mem­ber and death penal­ty oppo­nent. “[A]s great as my pain was and is, I came through the fog of my anger to real­ize that wish­ing death upon the young man who took my son’s life was not a solu­tion. I believe in my heart that more vio­lence, more pain and more death is not the path for­ward for jus­tice. That is why my heart is filled with hope that we will end the death penal­ty in Ohio,” she said. 

But Mr. Tobin crit­i­cized the char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of the five-year anniver­sary by death penal­ty oppo­nents as a ​“Day of Hope,” writ­ing that ​“It was not a day of hope for the vic­tims of these crimes, for Ohio pros­e­cu­tors who seek to ensure that jus­tice is car­ried out, or for the com­mu­ni­ties and fam­i­lies across Ohio who have expe­ri­enced tragedy like the one Clermont County is expe­ri­enc­ing.” Using the recent mur­ders of three chil­dren in Clermont County as an exam­ple, Mr. Tobin asked ​“Without the death penal­ty what jus­tice is there for a sec­ond mur­der vic­tim, a third, or a fourth?” 

With a bipar­ti­san abo­li­tion bill cur­rent­ly in the state leg­is­la­ture, Mr. Tobin ques­tioned pro­po­nents’ sup­port for abo­li­tion giv­en the inci­dent in Clermont County and fol­lowed up by ask­ing, ​“If so, do you believe that reflects the val­ues of your com­mu­ni­ty or what your com­mu­ni­ty would want if this [Clermont County] tragedy had happened there?” 

Dr. Walker high­light­ed issues of racial bias, lack of deter­rent effect, lengthy pro­ceed­ings, and over­all uncer­tain­ty with the cur­rent cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment sys­tem as rea­sons for her posi­tion and rec­om­mend­ed a re-focus on the needs of the vic­tims’ fam­i­lies. She con­clud­ed by writ­ing ​“In all my years liv­ing in Ohio, I have seen that my fel­low cit­i­zens val­ue life, care about com­mu­ni­ty safe­ty, and share com­pas­sion for those who are in need. The death penal­ty threat­ens all of those val­ues. So yes, it is my hope that we will end the death penal­ty because it has failed fam­i­lies like mine.” 

Ohio’s last exe­cu­tion took place on July 18, 2018. An unof­fi­cial mora­to­ri­um has pre­vent­ed any exe­cu­tions in the past five years because of con­cerns about the lethal injec­tion pro­to­col and dif­fi­cul­ties the state has encoun­tered when attempt­ing to obtain lethal injection drugs.