Two recent reports from Ohio highlighted the decline in the use of capital punishment in that state. On March 30, the Ohio Attorney General’s Office released its annual report on capital punishment. The Attorney General’s report noted three new death sentences, one commutation, and one execution in Ohio in 2014, down from the state’s peak of 17 death sentences in both 1995 and 1996. It also reported that Ohio juries have imposed four or fewer death sentences in each of the last four years. On the same day, Ohioans to Stop Executions (OTSE) issued a complementary report. In addition to the data from the Attorney General’s report, OTSE emphasized the exonerations of Ricky Jackson, Kwame Ajamu, and Wiley Bridgeman in 2014. The three former death row inmates were sentenced to death in 1975 based upon the coerced false eyewitness testimony of a 12-year-old boy. The OSTE report also discussed changes to Ohio’s lethal injection protocol in the wake of the botched execution of Dennis McGuire, which resulted in the postponement of all executions in Ohio until 2016. Finally, the report discussed the 56 reform recommendations released last year by the Supreme Court Joint Task Force on the Administration of Ohio’s Death Penalty, which include measures to reduce wrongful convictions, ban the death penalty for defendants with severe mental illness, and reduce racial and geographic disparities in sentencing.
(“Capital Crimes Annual Report,” Ohio Attorney General’s Office, March 30, 2015; “A Crumbling Institution: Why Ohio Must Fix or End the Death Penalty,” Ohioans to Stop Executions, March 30, 2015.) See Studies and Ohio.
