Ohio House Speaker Expresses Doubts About Death Penalty, as Opioid Experts, Governor Blast Call to Use Seized Fentanyl for Executions

The tur­moil sur­round­ing Ohio​’s death penal­ty con­tin­ued to grow as pub­lic health experts crit­i­cized a legislator’s sug­ges­tion that the state use seized drugs to car­ry out exe­cu­tions and the Speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives, Larry Householder (pic­tured), expressed grow­ing doubts about cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment itself. Governor Mike DeWine joined crit­ics of the fen­tanyl pro­pos­al, declar­ing that it was ​“not an option” for resum­ing exe­cu­tions in the state. 

The future of Ohio’s exe­cu­tion process has been uncer­tain since a fed­er­al mag­is­trate judge issued an opin­ion on January 14, 2019 liken­ing the state’s three-drug exe­cu­tion process to death by a com­bi­na­tion of water­board­ing, suf­fo­ca­tion, and chem­i­cal fire. Governor DeWine then put exe­cu­tions on hold, telling an Associated Press forum on February 19 that ​“Ohio is not going to exe­cute some­one under my watch when a fed­er­al judge has found it to be cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment.” As Ohio looked for new drugs drugs that could sur­vive a court chal­lenge, the Governor announced in July that the state could not obtain lethal-injec­tion drugs because phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies had threat­ened to block sales to all state agen­cies if their prod­ucts were divert­ed from med­ical use to use in exe­cu­tions, poten­tial­ly endan­ger­ing state med­ical pro­grams for vet­er­ans, peo­ple with addic­tion, and youth. 

Amidst the ongo­ing debate about Ohio’s death penal­ty, the state’s Republican House Speaker told reporters that his enthu­si­asm for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment was erod­ing. ​“I think I am prob­a­bly like most Ohioans, there was a time that I was extreme­ly sup­port­ive of the death penal­ty,” Householder said. ​“But, as time has gone on, I have become less and less sup­port­ive because of the cost, for one. It is extreme­ly expen­sive to put some­one to death in lieu of keep­ing them in life in prison. And, also, it’s becom­ing more and more dif­fi­cult to do an exe­cu­tion … we’ve gone from elec­tro­cu­tion to lethal injec­tion, now there are issues being raised about lethal injec­tion. It’s just become more and more dif­fi­cult to do and it’s more and more expensive.”

In response to the state’s inabil­i­ty to legal­ly pro­cure lethal-injec­tion drugs, state Rep. Scott Wiggam (R‑Wooster) emailed his col­leagues in the leg­is­la­ture with a pro­pos­al that the state mod­i­fy its exe­cu­tion pro­to­col to use fen­tanyl seized by police and the Drug Enforcement Agency. ​“I believe that seized fen­tanyl (con­sid­ered for­feit­ed con­tra­band through the court sys­tem) is the best solu­tion,” he wrote. Governor Mike DeWine flat­ly dis­missed the idea, telling reporters, ​“Fentanyl is not an option. We do not believe it would pass con­sti­tu­tion­al muster. We do not believe it would be upheld by a court, so there’s real­ly no rea­son to come for­ward with that proposal.” 

Public health advo­cates and experts on the opi­oid cri­sis also imme­di­ate­ly denounced the idea. Fentanyl ​“has killed enough already,” said Newtown Police Chief Tom Synan, a mem­ber of the Hamilton County Heroin Coalition and nation­al spokesper­son on the opi­oid cri­sis. ​“I want the death from fen­tanyl to stop, not to con­tribute to its cycle of death.”

Synan said that seized fen­tanyl would be of unknown strength, or that drugs seized might not actu­al­ly be fen­tanyl. He also warned about the col­lat­er­al social cost of using fen­tanyl from drug busts. ​“That fen­tanyl seized off the street may be why a fam­i­ly mem­ber will for­ev­er grieve the loss of a child,” Synan said.

Dr. Marc Fishman, an assis­tant pro­fes­sor of psy­chi­a­try at Johns Hopkins University, who research­es opi­oids and addic­tion, blast­ed the idea and the sug­ges­tion that doc­tors might be used ver­i­fy the poten­cy of seized fen­tanyl. ​“No physi­cian should in any way have any­thing to do with select­ing, ver­i­fy­ing, pre­scrib­ing, cer­ti­fy­ing the lethal­i­ty of any ille­gal­ly man­u­fac­tured, seized prod­ucts of crim­i­nal activ­i­ty … or any sub­stance to be used” to put some­one to death, Fishman said. He also expressed shock at the idea of using crim­i­nal con­tra­band in exe­cu­tions, say­ing, ​“What about seized bul­lets? Should we be using those for a fir­ing squad? No.”

Gary Daniels, chief lob­by­ist of the ACLU of Ohio, raised ques­tions about the pro­pos­al. ​“Where did the fen­tanyl come from? Has it been test­ed? … How do we know if it’s med­ical or black-mar­ket fen­tanyl?” he asked. ​“We think it is time for Ohio to end the death penal­ty. It’s frus­trat­ing that Ohio con­tin­ues to twist itself into knots find­ing ways to exe­cute peo­ple when Ohio has done such a bad job of it in recent history.”