STUDIES: Ohio Executions Reveal Vast Racial, Gender, and Geographic Inequities

“Ohio’s death penal­ty is plagued by vast inequities” ground­ed in race, gen­der, and geog­ra­phy, accord­ing to a new University of North Carolina study. UNC-Chapel Hill polit­i­cal sci­ence pro­fes­sor Frank Baumgartner exam­ined the 53 exe­cu­tions Ohio has con­duct­ed since resum­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the 1970s. His study found ​“quite sig­nif­i­cant” racial, gen­der, and geo­graph­ic dis­par­i­ties in Ohio’s exe­cu­tions that, Baumgartner said, ​“under­mine pub­lic con­fi­dence in the state’s abil­i­ty to car­ry out the death penal­ty in a fair and impar­tial man­ner.” The data showed that Ohio was 6 times more like­ly to exe­cute a pris­on­er con­vict­ed of killing a white female vic­tim than if the vic­tim was a black male. Although 43% of Ohio mur­der vic­tims are white, 65% of Ohio exe­cu­tions involved the mur­der of white vic­tims. Similarly, while only 27% of Ohio mur­der vic­tims are female, 52% of all exe­cu­tions involved cas­es with female vic­tims. The study also dis­cov­ered sig­nif­i­cant geo­graph­ic dis­par­i­ties in Ohio exe­cu­tions. More that half of the state’s exe­cu­tions were con­cen­trat­ed in just 4 coun­ties, while more than 3/​4 of Ohio coun­ties have not pro­duced any exe­cu­tions. Lake County had an exe­cu­tion rate that was 11 times the statewide aver­age. Although the state’s three most pop­u­lous coun­ties (Cuyahoga, Franklin, and Hamilton) have sim­i­lar mur­der rates, Hamilton’s .60 exe­cu­tions per 100 homi­cides was more than dou­ble the rate in Cuyahoga and near­ly 9 times that in Franklin. Sharon L. Davies, Executive Director of the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at The Ohio State University, said that the ​“race or gen­der of a vic­tim, and the coun­ty of the crime, should not influ­ence who is sen­tenced to die” and urged ​“Ohio cit­i­zens and lawmakers[to] review the find­ings of this impor­tant research.” (Click here to enlarge image.)