Report: 83% of Death Sentences Have Not Resulted in Executions Under Ohio’s ​‘Lethargic’ Death Penalty

Just one out of every six death sen­tences imposed in Ohio in the past forty years has result­ed in an exe­cu­tion, accord­ing to the Ohio Attorney General’s 2020 Ohio Capital Crimes Annual Report. The report, released by Attorney General Dave Yost on April 1, 2021, crit­i­cized the state’s death-penal­ty sys­tem as ​“increas­ing­ly time-con­sum­ing, cost­ly, and lethargic.”

According to the report, 336 peo­ple have been sen­tenced to death since the state’s cur­rent death-penal­ty law was insti­tut­ed in 1981. Of the death-row cas­es that have reached a final out­come, near­ly twice as many have result­ed in pris­on­ers being removed from death row by the courts or through exec­u­tive clemen­cy (111) than being exe­cut­ed (56). The vast major­i­ty of the removals for cause are cas­es in which pris­on­ers were resen­tenced to life or less or exon­er­at­ed after their con­vic­tions or death sen­tences were over­turned because of prej­u­di­cial con­sti­tu­tion­al vio­la­tions (82). Ohio gov­er­nors com­mut­ed 21 death sen­tences, and anoth­er 8 pris­on­ers were removed from death row after courts deter­mined they were not sub­ject to the death penal­ty because of intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty. The report said anoth­er 33 pris­on­ers had died of nat­ur­al caus­es or sui­cide while on death row.

A plu­ral­i­ty of those sen­tenced to death under the 1981 statute, 140 (41.7%), remain on the state’s death row. Thirteen of those pris­on­ers have spent at least 12,000 days, or near­ly 33 years, on death row, far beyond the dura­tion that inter­na­tion­al tri­bunals say vio­lates U.S. human rights oblig­a­tions. The annu­al death penal­ty report does not include the 97 Ohio death-row pris­on­ers whose death sen­tences were over­turned in 1978 when the U.S. Supreme Court declared the state’s 1974 statute uncon­sti­tu­tion­al or the 7 oth­ers whose con­vic­tions or death sen­tences imposed under the uncon­sti­tu­tion­al statute were over­turned on oth­er grounds and not reimposed.

DPIC Analysis of Ohio Death Sentences

A DPIC analy­sis of data from all 440 indi­vid­u­als sen­tenced to death in Ohio since the state rein­tro­duced cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in 1974 has found that the sin­gle most like­ly out­come of an Ohio death sen­tence is that the cap­i­tal con­vic­tion or death sen­tence will be over­turned and the defen­dant will be resen­tenced to life or less or exon­er­at­ed. The analy­sis found that:

• 215 of Ohio’s death-row pris­on­ers — near­ly half (48.9%) of every­one sen­tenced to death — have been removed from death row and resen­tenced to life or less or exonerated. 
• Courts have over­turned the con­vic­tions or death sen­tences of 194 of those pris­on­ers (44.1%) as a result of prej­u­di­cial con­sti­tu­tion­al or state law violations. 
• 31.8% of pris­on­ers sen­tenced to death in Ohio since the 1970s are still on death row, while 12.7% have been executed. 

During this peri­od, 11 peo­ple who were wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death in Ohio have been exon­er­at­ed, con­sti­tut­ing one exon­er­a­tion for every 5.1 exe­cu­tions. All 11 of the exon­er­a­tions have involved either offi­cial mis­con­duct or per­jury and 8 have involved both. Seven of the exon­er­a­tions took more than two decades and five took more than a quar­ter cen­tu­ry before the mis­con­duct was revealed and addressed.

The data from Ohio reflects a death-penal­ty sys­tem even more error prone than the nation­al aver­age. A 2015 study of death sen­tences imposed nation­wide from 1973 to 2013 found that 16% of peo­ple sen­tenced to death had been exe­cut­ed, 38% had their sen­tence or con­vic­tion over­turned, and 35% remained on death row. The rest had died on death row of sui­cide or nat­ur­al caus­es, had their sen­tence com­mut­ed, or were removed from death row for oth­er rea­sons. DPIC’s February 2021 Special Report: The Innocence Epidemic found that 185 for­mer death-sen­tenced pris­on­ers have been exon­er­at­ed nation­wide since 1973, com­pared with 1532 exe­cu­tions — one exon­er­a­tion for every 8.3 exe­cu­tions. It found that the six death-row exon­er­a­tions in Cuyahoga County, all involv­ing offi­cial mis­con­duct, were the sec­ond most of any coun­ty in the nation.

Asserting that only one of the exonerees con­vict­ed under the 1981 Ohio death-penal­ty statute was actu­al­ly inno­cent, the Attorney General’s report blamed the state’s death penal­ty prob­lems on the unavail­abil­i­ty of exe­cu­tion drugs, death-row pris­on­ers seek­ing to enforce their con­sti­tu­tion­al rights, and fed­er­al judges. ​“Ohio impos­es death sen­tences …, then spends years debat­ing, review­ing, appeal­ing and fail­ing to act on those deci­sions,” the report said. Executions ​“have been delayed because Ohio cur­rent­ly lacks a means of lethal injec­tion (the only method of exe­cu­tion per­mit­ted under state law), or because inmates are tak­ing advan­tage of mul­ti­ple avenues for appeal.” The report claims that “[t]hese delays are aggra­vat­ed by judges who fail to move cas­es in a timely way.”

In 2014, a task force appoint­ed by the Ohio Supreme Court found sys­tem-wide defects in the admin­is­tra­tion of the death penal­ty and rec­om­mend­ed 56 reforms. Little action has been tak­en on those rec­om­men­da­tions. However, one of the rec­om­mend­ed reforms, pro­hibit­ing the death penal­ty for peo­ple with seri­ous men­tal ill­ness, was signed into law in January 2021 over the oppo­si­tion of state pros­e­cu­tors. Executions are cur­rent­ly on hold in the state as a result of prob­lems with Ohio’s lethal-injec­tion pro­to­col and the refusal of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies to sell their med­i­cinnes for use in exe­cu­tions. Bipartisan bills that would abol­ish the death penal­ty were intro­duced in March and are cur­rent­ly pend­ing in state House and Senate committees.