Updated: Mar 22, 2023
News Brief: Ohio Governor Reprieves and Reschedules Four More Executions
- Ohio
- Facts & Research
- Executions
- Upcoming Executions
- Reprieves
- Warren Henness
- Stanley Adams
- John Drummond
- James Hanna
Sep 13, 2021
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.
NEWS BRIEF — Poll Shows Decreasing Support for Death Penalty in Texas
May 05, 2021
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.