Ohio House Passes Bill to Bar the Death Penalty for Defendants with Serious Mental Illness

The Ohio House of Representatives has over­whelm­ing­ly approved a bill that would ban the death penal­ty for offend­ers who were seri­ous­ly men­tal­ly ill at the time of the offense. House Bill 136, spon­sored by Rep. Brett Hillyer (R – Uhrichsville, pic­tured), passed the House by a vote of 76 – 18 on June 5, 2019 with bipar­ti­san sup­port and was referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee on June 11. Hillyer’s bill would remove the death penal­ty as a sen­tenc­ing option for defen­dants who can show they had schiz­o­phre­nia, schizoaf­fec­tive dis­or­der, bipo­lar dis­or­der, or delu­sion­al dis­or­der that ​“sig­nif­i­cant­ly impaired [their] capac­i­ty to exer­cise ratio­nal judg­ment” at the time of the crime. It also pro­vides a one-year time frame for pris­on­ers cur­rent­ly on death row to seek to have their death sen­tences over­turned on grounds of seri­ous men­tal ill­ness. Defendants with seri­ous men­tal ill­ness who are con­vict­ed of aggra­vat­ed mur­der would be sub­ject to a max­i­mum sen­tence of life without parole.

The bill is backed by a broad coali­tion of sup­port­ers that include the National Alliance on Mental Illness Ohio, the Ohio Psychiatric Physicians Association, the Ohio State Medical Association, the Ohio Public Defender, for­mer Ohio attor­ney gen­er­al Jim Petro, and for­mer Ohio Supreme Court jus­tice Evelyn Stratton. The mea­sure address­es one of the 56 death-penal­ty reforms rec­om­mend­ed by the Ohio Supreme Court Death Penalty Task Force in 2014. Hillyer, who said the bill was draft­ed in con­sul­ta­tion with Justice Stratton, stressed that the bill ​“isn’t about guilt or inno­cence. You can still be found guilty of the cap­i­tal offense of aggra­vat­ed mur­der,” he said. Ohio state law and the U.S. con­sti­tu­tion also bar the death penal­ty for offend­ers diag­nosed with intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty (for­mer­ly, men­tal retar­da­tion) and those who com­mit­ted the offense as juveniles.

The Ohio Prosecuting Attorneys Association has opposed the men­tal ill­ness exemp­tion, argu­ing that it could be abused by defen­dants who are not seri­ous­ly men­tal­ly ill. The association’s exec­u­tive direc­tor, Louis Tobin, crit­i­cized the pro­pos­al as ben­e­fit­ing only peo­ple ​“whose men­tal ill­ness is so weak that they were unable to cre­ate rea­son­able doubt in the mind of even one sin­gle juror” that they were not guilty by rea­son of insanity.

The U.S. Supreme Court has repeat­ed­ly dis­tin­guished between legal defens­es such as not guilty by rea­son of insan­i­ty that excuse an indi­vid­ual from guilt and those that exempt an accused from exe­cu­tion. There is no cur­rent con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­hi­bi­tion against exe­cut­ing those with seri­ous men­tal ill­ness. While indi­vid­u­als who have become men­tal­ly incom­pe­tent after con­vic­tion may not be exe­cut­ed if they lack a ratio­nal under­stand­ing of why they are to be exe­cut­ed, that nar­row lim­i­ta­tion includes only a small sub­set of con­demned pris­on­ers with seri­ous men­tal ill­ness. Expressing sup­port for the bill, state Rep. Bill Seitz (R – Cincinnati) asked, ​“Isn’t it worth being absolute­ly cer­tain that we’re only exe­cut­ing the peo­ple who are tru­ly depraved[,] … the worst of the worst?” ​“We need to have the strike zone as nar­row as pos­si­ble,” Seitz said. ​“I believe sup­port for the death penal­ty might drop to zero if we con­tin­ue to be indis­crim­i­nate in who we allow to be put to death in Ohio.”

Ohio is one of ten states to con­sid­er a seri­ous men­tal ill­ness exemp­tion bill in 2019 but would be the first death-penal­ty state to pass such an exemp­tion. In January, the Virginia State Senate passed a bill to ban the death penal­ty for defen­dants with severe men­tal ill­ness, but the bill died in com­mit­tee in the House. The American Bar Association issued a white paper in 2016 urg­ing states to end exe­cu­tions of peo­ple with severe mental illness.

(Jim Provance, Ohio House votes to elim­i­nate death penal­ty for those with ​‘seri­ous men­tal ill­ness’, Toledo Blade, June 5, 2019; Laura Hancock, Ohio House pass­es bill ban­ning exe­cu­tions of peo­ple with ​‘seri­ous men­tal ill­ness’ dur­ing crime, Cleveland Plain Dealer, June 5, 2019; Ohio House approves death penal­ty ​‘men­tal ill­ness’ bill, Associated Press, June 5, 2019.) See Mental Illness and Recent Legislative Activity.