OUTLIER COUNTIES: Death Sentences, Executions More Likely in Hamilton County Than Elsewhere in Ohio

With 24 pris­on­ers cur­rent­ly con­demned to die, Hamilton County—home to Cincinnati—has the largest death row of any coun­ty in Ohio, despite a small­er pop­u­la­tion and a low­er mur­der rate than oth­er parts of the state. Ten of the 55 pris­on­ers exe­cut­ed in the state since the 1970s were sen­tenced to death in Hamilton County, again more than any oth­er Ohio county. 

In a recent pair of arti­cles in The Cincinnati Enquirer, reporter Dan Horn describes the coun­ty’s long his­to­ry with the death penal­ty and reports that the coun­ty’s cur­rent aggres­sive use of the death penal­ty stems from the coun­ty’s cul­ture and pol­i­tics. According to Horn’s analy­sis of Death Penalty Information Center data, Hamilton County’s death row is cur­rent­ly the 22^nd largest coun­ty death row in the coun­try. While Hamilton is not among the nation’s sev­en­ty largest coun­ties, it ranks among the few­er than 1 per­cent of U.S. coun­ties that the Enquirer found now account for 40 per­cent of all death-row pris­on­ers in the coun­try. Of coun­ties with 20 or more death-row pris­on­ers, Hamilton has the sev­enth largest death row, per capita. 

“There’s no ques­tion Hamilton County is and def­i­nite­ly was a con­ser­v­a­tive coun­ty,” said Andrew Welsh-Huggins, the author of the book No Winners Here Tonight—a com­pre­hen­sive analy­sis of Ohio’s death penal­ty. ​“A con­ser­v­a­tive coun­ty is going to elect con­ser­v­a­tive pros­e­cu­tors, and they’re going to take their cues from that,” Welsh-Huggins told Horn. Hamilton County pros­e­cu­tor Joe Deters exem­pli­fies that char­ac­ter­i­za­tion, say­ing, ​“People in real­ly bad cas­es want the death penal­ty. There are cer­tain cas­es that are so hideous they are just evil.” 

Welsh-Huggins’s book — and his ear­li­er 2005 cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment study for Associated Press—doc­u­ment­ed Ohio’s on-going unequal appli­ca­tion of the death penal­ty, with race-of-vic­tim, geog­ra­phy, and plea-bar­gains all affect­ing death sen­tenc­ing. The AP study showed that while 8.5% of cap­i­tal­ly charged defen­dants had received death sen­tences in Cuyahoga County (includ­ing the city of Cleveland), 43% had been sen­tenced to death in Hamilton. 

Today, two oth­er Ohio coun­ties with larg­er pop­u­la­tions and more mur­ders than Hamilton have few­er peo­ple on death row: Cuyahoga has 21 and Franklin County 11. Welsh-Huggins sum­ma­rized the cause of such geo­graph­ic dis­par­i­ties, telling Horn: ​“The law is pros­e­cut­ed dif­fer­ent­ly depend­ing on who is the elect­ed pros­e­cu­tor. Your chances of going to death row depend on where you com­mit­ted the crime.”