Ohio General Assembly Resumes Bipartisan Efforts to Abolish the Death Penalty

On September 6, 2023, a bipar­ti­san group of Ohio state rep­re­sen­ta­tives rein­tro­duced a bill that would abol­ish the death penal­ty and replace the pun­ish­ment with life in prison with­out parole. Legislators in Ohio have debat­ed the use of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment for near­ly a decade, but this renewed effort comes after state sen­a­tors intro­duced Senate Bill 101 ear­li­er in the year, which would also abol­ish the use of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Among the pri­ma­ry spon­sors of these bills is Representative Jean Schmidt (R‑Loveland). Representative Schmidt cit­ed her pro-life val­ues in her sup­port of this bill, stat­ing she ​“believe[s] life begins at con­cep­tion and it ends with nat­ur­al death.” For Rep. Schmidt, ​“the death penal­ty stops [nat­ur­al death] because the death penal­ty is any­thing but nat­ur­al.” Rep. Schmidt spoke with for­mer DPIC Deputy Director Ngozi Ndulue in 2021, where she dis­cussed how her view on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment has changed. After meet­ing exonerees from Ohio, Rep. Schmidt said she saw that the death penal­ty did not act as a deter­rent, but rather allowed for an error-prone sys­tem to impose an irre­versible pun­ish­ment. Rep. Schmidt’s co-spon­sor, Representative Adam Miller (D‑Columbus) says he is ​“astound­ed” that Ohio ​“continue[s] to waste mil­lions and mil­lions of tax­pay­er dol­lars on a failed sys­tem that has nev­er, nev­er proven to keep us safe.”

According to the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, there are cur­rent­ly 122 pris­on­ers housed on death row. Ohio has not car­ried out an exe­cu­tion since 2018, when the state exe­cut­ed Robert Van Hook via lethal injec­tion. Since 2019, Governor Mike DeWine has repeat­ed­ly delayed exe­cu­tions in Ohio, due to the state’s inabil­i­ty to obtain the drugs need­ed for lethal injec­tion. Attorney General David Yost has crit­i­cized the state’s spend­ing on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Per AG Yost’s Capital Crimes Report, it would cost the state of Ohio between $128-$384 mil­lion to impose the death penal­ty for all 122 pris­on­ers cur­rent­ly on death row. ​“That’s a stun­ning amount of mon­ey to spend on a pro­gram that doesn’t achieve its pur­pose,” Yost said. Continuing to cite the argu­ments of those both in favor and against the death penal­ty, Yost thinks that with the cur­rent sys­tem in place ​“nei­ther side is get­ting what it wants while the state goes on point­less­ly burn­ing through enor­mous tax­pay­er resources.” AG Yost believes that this new­ly intro­duced leg­is­la­tion will open the door for debate sur­round­ing the death penal­ty, but ulti­mate­ly sup­ports the use of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment for the ​“most heinous offend­ers.” Even though death penal­ty oppo­nents say they have greater bipar­ti­san sup­port this leg­isla­tive year, many groups, includ­ing the Ohio Prosecuting Attorneys Association, oppose the pro­posed leg­is­la­tion to end the death penalty.

At a press con­fer­ence dis­cussing the intro­duc­tion of the house bill, Representative Miller reit­er­at­ed that ​“the death penal­ty is expen­sive, cost­ly, time-con­sum­ing, and an inef­fec­tive means of reduc­ing crime rates… The death penal­ty dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly affects mar­gin­al­ized com­mu­ni­ties, and this alone tells us the sys­tem is bro­ken.” Rep. Miller also acknowl­edged that abol­ish­ing the death penal­ty in Ohio would be just one step, among many, towards fix­ing the crim­i­nal legal sys­tem. He said, ​“it is time to focus on invest­ing on poli­cies that pre­vent crime in the first place from hap­pen­ing, instead of com­ing on the back end.”