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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