Ohio Joins Fifteen Other States Without an Execution in 5 Years

Today marks the five-year anniver­sary of Ohio’s last exe­cu­tion, which took place on July 18, 2018. Ohio now joins 15 oth­er states with­out an exe­cu­tion in the past five years. Although there is no for­mal mora­to­ri­um, Governor Mike DeWine has issued sev­er­al reprieves due to con­cerns about the lethal injec­tion pro­to­col and the dif­fi­cul­ty the state has had obtain­ing lethal injec­tion drugs. Ohio has exe­cut­ed 56 peo­ple in the mod­ern death penal­ty era, plac­ing it 8^th over­all in the num­ber of exe­cu­tions in the United States. 

Most recent­ly, Governor Dewine issued a reprieve for Keith Lamar, post­pon­ing the orig­i­nal November 16, 2023 exe­cu­tion date to January 13, 2027. His office stat­ed the reprieve was issued ​“due to ongo­ing prob­lems involv­ing the will­ing­ness of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal sup­pli­ers to pro­vide drugs to the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction (DRC).” Citing the same prob­lem in 2020, Governor DeWine issued three reprieves for exe­cu­tions sched­uled from 2021 to 2023. According to the Lethal Injection Information Center of the International non-prof­it Reprieve, over 60 glob­al health­care com­pa­nies world­wide have tak­en some form of action to ensure their prod­ucts are not used in exe­cu­tions.

Dubbed a ​“bro­ken cap­i­tal-pun­ish­ment sys­tem” by the Ohio Attorney General in its 2022 Capital Crimes report, high cost and lengthy death row con­fine­ment time are not­ed as key char­ac­ter­is­tics of the cur­rent sys­tem. Based on a vari­ety of stud­ies in oth­er states, the Ohio Legislative Service Commission esti­mates an addi­tion­al cost of $128 to $384 mil­lion to impose the death penal­ty on the remain­ing 128 pris­on­ers on death row. With an ever-increas­ing aver­age of 21 years on death row before an exe­cu­tion date is set, the report states that death by sui­cide or nat­ur­al caus­es is more like­ly than an execution. 

A bipar­ti­san bill to abol­ish the death penal­ty was intro­duced in the Ohio Senate this year. The Ohio Senate Judiciary Committee held the first hear­ing on Senate Bill 101 on May 9, 2023. Sponsored by Democratic Leader Nickie Antonio (D‑Lakewood) and Senator Stephen Huffman (R‑Tipp City), the bill also has bipar­ti­san sup­port from 10 cospon­sors (4 Republican and 6 Democrat law­mak­ers). According to the edi­to­r­i­al board of Cleveland​.com and The Plain Dealer, there is sup­port for the bill amongst ​“more than a third of the state Senate” across the polit­i­cal spec­trum and geographic regions. 

Robert Van Hook, a vet­er­an with a his­to­ry of child­hood abuse and untreat­ed men­tal health issues at the time of the inci­dent, was the last per­son exe­cut­ed in Ohio via lethal injection.