News Brief

Ohio Governor Mike DeWine (pic­tured) has issued reprieves fur­ther post­pon­ing four exe­cu­tions that had been sched­uled between January and May 2022. The governor’s orders, announced September 10, 2021, resched­uled the exe­cu­tions for between December 2024 and May 2025.

DeWine grant­ed reprieves to death-row pris­on­ers Warren K. Henness, Stanley T. Adams, John E. Drummond, and James G. Hanna. A news release announc­ing the reprieves, said ​“Governor DeWine is issu­ing these reprieves due to ongo­ing prob­lems involv­ing the will­ing­ness of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal sup­pli­ers to pro­vide drugs to the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction (DRC), pur­suant to DRC pro­to­col, with­out endan­ger­ing oth­er Ohioans.” 

U.S. phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers uni­form­ly oppose the use of their med­i­cines to exe­cute pris­on­ers. in 2013, to mis­lead drug man­u­fac­tur­ers about the intend­ed use of their med­i­cines, DRC arranged for the pur­chase to be made by the Ohio Department of Mental Health and sur­rep­ti­tious­ly divert­ed the drugs to DRC to be used for lethal injec­tion. DeWine has said the com­pa­nies have informed him they would halt sales to state facil­i­ties or agen­cies if Ohio again mis­us­es med­i­cines intend­ed for ther­a­peu­tic pur­pos­es as exe­cu­tion drugs. 

This is the fourth time DeWine has reprieved and resched­uled Henness’s exe­cu­tion since January 2019. Henness was pre­vi­ous­ly sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed on February 13, 2019, September 12, 2019, May 14, 2020, and January 12, 2022. DeWine resched­uled his exe­cu­tion for December 17, 2024. The three oth­er men all pre­vi­ous­ly received exe­cu­tion reprieves from for­mer Governor John Kasich in September 2017. DeWine resched­uled Adams’ exe­cu­tion date from February 16, 2022 to February 19, 2025; Drummond’s exe­cu­tion was moved from April 21, 2022 to April 16, 2025; and Hanna’s exe­cu­tion was resched­uled from May 18, 2022 to May 14, 2025.

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A new poll of reg­is­tered Texas vot­ers has found that sup­port for the death penal­ty, while still strong, has fall­en sig­nif­i­cant­ly over the past decade. A University of Texas/​Texas Tribune inter­net sur­vey of 1,200 reg­is­tered vot­ers con­duct­ed from April 16 – 22, 2021 found that 63% say they favor keep­ing the death penal­ty for peo­ple con­vict­ed of vio­lent crimes. That num­ber is down from 75% in February 2015 and 78% when the poll began in 2010. 

The poll found that few­er Texas vot­ers said they want to keep the death penal­ty than at any pri­or time in the pol­l’s his­to­ry. The num­bers reflect that 19.2% of the elec­torate who had expressed sup­port for keep­ing the death penal­ty in 2010 have changed their minds, near­ly one in five pri­or sup­port­ers. Since 2015, 16.0% of those who favored keep­ing the death penal­ty — near­ly one in six — have changed their minds.

The poll has a mar­gin of error of +/- 2.83 per­cent­age points. 

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