Legislators in Ohio are seeking to enact death penalty reforms as the state grapples with problems in the application of capital punishment. Sen. Bill Seitz, a Republican, and Sen. Sandra Williams, a Democrat, are working on four bills to address some of the reforms recommended by the Ohio Supreme Court Death Penalty Task Force last year. The bills would prevent the execution of defendants with serious mental impairments, establish a fund for indigent defense, require certification of crime labs and coroners, and prohibit convictions where the only evidence is testimony from a jailhouse informant. Since 2003, Ohio has removed 20 inmates from death row through exonerations, clemency, or sentence reductions because of intellectual disabilities. An additional 5 men who had once been on death row, but had their sentences reduced when capital punishment was struck down in the 1970s, were also exonerated and released. Ohio’s executions are currently on hold until at least 2016 because of problems with lethal injection. In recent years, several Ohio officials who once supported capital punishment have spoken out against it. Among them is Paul Pfeifer (pictured), a senior justice on the Ohio Supreme Court and the legislative sponsor of the bill to reinstate Ohio’s death penalty in 1981, who now says, “I really think it’s time to shake it up and have life in prison without the possibility of parole, to have that be the ultimate penalty available to juries. It is more of a death lottery instead of something that is evenly applied across the state. The correct thing to do is take it off the books.”

(A. Johnson and M. Wagner, “Questions raised about the death penalty in Ohio,” Columbus Dispatch, March 8, 2015.) See Arbitrariness and Innocence.

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