Ohio Governor Mike DeWine Calls Lethal Injection A Practical Impossibility, Says State Will Not Execute Anyone in 2021

Saying that “[l]ethal injec­tion appears to us to be impos­si­ble from a prac­ti­cal point of view today,” Ohio Governor Mike DeWine (pic­tured) told reporters it is ​“pret­ty clear” that the state will not exe­cute any­one in 2021. 

In a December 8, 2020 year-end inter­view with Associated Press, DeWine said the state has an ​“unof­fi­cial mora­to­ri­um” on the death penal­ty as a result of its inabil­i­ty to pro­cure lethal injec­tion exe­cu­tion drugs and that leg­is­la­tors would have to choose a dif­fer­ent method of putting pris­on­ers to death before exe­cu­tions resume in the future. Ohio has not con­duct­ed an exe­cu­tion since July 2018, and DeWine said he did not think the leg­is­la­ture would con­sid­er switch­ing exe­cu­tion meth­ods to be a priority.

DeWine’s announce­ment is the lat­est in a long series of death-penal­ty relat­ed devel­op­ments in Ohio in 2019 and 2020. In January 2019, fed­er­al mag­is­trate Judge Michael Merz, liken­ing the state’s exe­cu­tion process to a com­bi­na­tion of water­board­ing, suf­fo­ca­tion, and expo­sure to chem­i­cal fire, issued an opin­ion say­ing that exe­cu­tions under Ohio’s cur­rent drug pro­to­col ​“will almost cer­tain­ly sub­ject [pris­on­ers] to severe pain and need­less suf­fer­ing.” In response to that rul­ing, DeWine halt­ed all exe­cu­tions in the state until the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction devel­oped a new court-approved exe­cu­tion pro­to­col. ​“Ohio is not going to exe­cute some­one under my watch when a fed­er­al judge has found it to be cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment,” he said then. 

In July 2019, DeWine post­poned the exe­cu­tion of Warren Henness because the state could not pro­cure lethal-injec­tion drugs. He told reporters that phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers are unwill­ing to sell the state drugs for exe­cu­tions and have threat­ened to stop sell­ing med­i­cines to any state agency if they sus­pect the drugs might be divert­ed from ther­a­peu­tic use to use in exe­cu­tions. He issued more reprieves in October 2019, March 2020, June 2020, and September 2020, describ­ing them as nec­es­sary because of ​“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.”

In 1981, dur­ing DeWine’s time as a state leg­is­la­tor, he helped write Ohio’s death-penal­ty law. He told Associated Press that, at that time, ​“I vot­ed for the death penal­ty [believ­ing] … that it in fact did deter crime, which to me is the moral jus­ti­fi­ca­tion.” Now, he said, he is ​“much more skep­ti­cal” about whether the death penal­ty is a deterrent. 

DeWine said the unof­fi­cial mora­to­ri­um would con­tin­ue indef­i­nite­ly unless the leg­is­la­ture adopt­ed an alter­na­tive exe­cu­tion method. Ohio Prosecuting Attorneys Association Director Lou Tobin expressed increduli­ty at DeWine’s asser­tion that exe­cu­tion drugs are unavail­able. ​“Seven oth­er states and the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment pro­ceed­ed with exe­cu­tions in 2019 and 2020,” he said. ​“Two of those states used the same drug cock­tail Ohio uses. How are these oth­er states and the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment get­ting the drugs but Ohio can’t? I think that ques­tion should be answered before we talk about what the alternatives are.”

Democratic state sen­a­tor Nickie Antonio, who was one of two sen­a­tors in a bipar­ti­san coali­tion that announced in March its inten­tion to intro­duce death-penal­ty repeal leg­is­la­tion, sug­gest­ed that the gov­er­nor’s state­ments indi­cat­ed that he might be open to repeal­ing the state’s death penal­ty. ​“I can’t get into his head or look into his heart, but I think he’s sig­naled it in many ways,” she said.

The coalition’s oth­er state sen­a­tor, Republican Kristina Roegner, said that ​“I don’t think it would be intel­lec­tu­al­ly hon­est of me” to be pro-life and sup­port the death penal­ty. ​“There is a beat­ing heart. That’s a human, and I just don’t think it’s right to take their lives either,” she said.