Ohio Legislators Launch Bipartisan Effort to Repeal State’s Death Penalty

A bipar­ti­san group of leg­is­la­tors has announced the intro­duc­tion of a bill to repeal Ohio’s death penal­ty. In a vir­tu­al press con­fer­ence on February 18, 2021, four Republican and four Democratic leg­is­la­tors spoke about the lat­est effort to end cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the Buckeye State.

“Like so many Ohioans, I once sup­port­ed cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment and over time, with prayer and reflec­tion have come to believe it’s the wrong pol­i­cy for the state of Ohio,” said Sen. Steve Huffman (R – Tipp City, pic­tured left), the lead Republican spon­sor of the bill. He cred­it­ed his reli­gious beliefs for his change of heart, say­ing, ​“Human life is pre­cious. It’s not the role of the gov­ern­ment to end the life of the citizens.” 

Sen. Nickie Antonio (D – Lakewood, pic­tured right), the lead Democratic spon­sor, has intro­duced repeal leg­is­la­tion sev­er­al times, but she said grow­ing bipar­ti­san sup­port could make the dif­fer­ence this year. ​“I think what’s new is instead of an indi­vid­ual from the Republican side of the aisle (spon­sor­ing an anti-death penal­ty bill), you are hear­ing about a team,” she said. ​“There is a team right now that is ded­i­cat­ed to end­ing the death penal­ty in Ohio. … And that team can only get larger.” 

“It’s time for the state of Ohio to take the com­pas­sion­ate, prag­mat­ic and pru­dent step to abol­ish the death penal­ty, which has been found to be expen­sive, imprac­ti­cal, unjust, inhu­mane and even erro­neous,” Antonio said.

Ohio’s last exe­cu­tion was in 2018, and Governor Mike DeWine has insti­tut­ed an ​“unof­fi­cial mora­to­ri­um” as a result of prob­lems with the state’s lethal-injec­tion pro­to­col. In January 2021, DeWine signed into law a mea­sure that bans the exe­cu­tion of peo­ple who were severe­ly men­tal­ly ill at the time of their crimes. Ohio is the first state to pass such a law. Though DeWine has not revealed his stance on the repeal bill, he recent­ly pro­posed a pack­age of anti-crime poli­cies that he said ​“are so much more impor­tant in regard to sav­ing lives than the death penalty itself.”

Rep. Jean Schmidt (R – Loveland) said that she used to sup­port cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, but changed her views after meet­ing with exoneree Joe D’Ambrosio, who spent 23 years on death row in Ohio for a crime he did not com­mit. ​“It got me to think­ing that we have to make sure that we nev­er kill an inno­cent per­son. Life in prison with­out parole will be a hard pun­ish­ment for those indi­vid­u­als that deserve it,” Schmidt said. 

Sen. Niraj Antani (R – Miamisburg), who was a House spon­sor of a pri­or abo­li­tion bill before win­ning elec­tion to the Senate, said that he sees a con­tin­u­ing evo­lu­tion of his party’s views on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. ​“Our par­ty will see that this is a pro-life issue. Our par­ty will see this as (an anti-) big-gov­ern­ment issue,” he said.

On the same day that leg­is­la­tors announced the intro­duc­tion of the Ohio repeal bill, DPIC announced the addi­tion of 11 pre­vi­ous­ly unrecord­ed death-row exon­er­a­tions to its Innocence List, includ­ing two cas­es from Cuyahoga County, Ohio, where D’Ambrosio was con­vict­ed. Cuyahoga County’s six death-row exon­er­a­tions trails only Cook County (Chicago), Illinois for the most of any coun­ty in the coun­try. All six exon­er­a­tions involved police and/​or pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct, accom­pa­nied in five of the cas­es by perjury/​false accu­sa­tion. Eleven peo­ple have been exon­er­at­ed from Ohio’s death row since 1973. While the U.S. has a ratio of one exon­er­a­tion for every 8.3 exe­cu­tions, Ohio’s ratio is one exon­er­a­tion for every five executions.

A poll con­duct­ed in September and October 2020 found strong bipar­ti­san sup­port for end­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Support for abo­li­tion broad­ened — with majori­ties of both Democrats and Republicans favor­ing repeal — when respon­dents were pre­sent­ed with infor­ma­tion about the admin­is­tra­tion of the death penal­ty, includ­ing its costs and the risk of exe­cut­ing innocent people. 

“I think that there’s a shift in the coun­try that we’re also see­ing reflect­ed in the state,” Sen. Antonio said. ​“We also have a gov­er­nor who has put a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions right now. There’s more dif­fi­cul­ty to — I think it’s an oxy­moron — ​‘humane­ly’ exe­cute some­one,” she said.