Ohio Governor Issues Three More Reprieves, Reschedules Executions for 2025

Ohio Governor Mike DeWine has issued reprieves of three more exe­cu­tions that had been set to occur in 2022, resched­ul­ing them for 2025. In exec­u­tive orders issued February 18, 2022, DeWine halt­ed the exe­cu­tions of Percy Hutton, Douglas Coley, and Cedric Carter, who had been sched­uled to be put to death June 22, July 20, and August 24, 2022, respec­tive­ly. The gov­er­nor resched­uled Hutton’s exe­cu­tion for June 18, 2025, Coley’s for September 24, 2025, and Carter’s for August 27, 2025.

A news release from the gov­er­nor’s office said DeWine issued the reprieves in response to ​“ongo­ing prob­lems involv­ing the will­ing­ness of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal sup­pli­ers to pro­vide drugs” for use in exe­cu­tions ​“with­out endan­ger­ing oth­er Ohioans.” Drug man­u­fac­tur­ers had informed the gov­er­nor that they would halt sell­ing med­i­cines to state facil­i­ties if Ohio divert­ed drugs that had been sold for med­ical use and instead used them in executions.

Ohio last car­ried out an exe­cu­tion in July 2018. Of the 68 exe­cu­tion dates set for August 2018 through the end of 2022, 45 have been resched­uled after being halt­ed by reprieves issued by for­mer Governor John Kasich or by Gov. DeWine, 9 have been stayed by the courts, 8 have been with­drawn or oth­er­wise resched­uled, one death sen­tence has been com­mut­ed, and 4 pris­on­ers have died of nat­ur­al caus­es on death row. It is expect­ed that Governor DeWine will issue anoth­er reprieve and resched­ule the pend­ing September 15, 2022 exe­cu­tion date for Kareem Jackson.