Entries tagged with “Cuyahoga County, OH”

Policy Issues

Arbitrariness

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Race

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Sep 17, 2021

OUTLIER COUNTIES: Ohio Death-Row Prisoner Challenges Sentence Based on Hamilton County Race Discrimination Study

An African-American man sen­tenced to death in Hamilton County, Ohio in 1999 for the mur­der of a white man is seek­ing to over­turn his con­vic­tion and death sen­tence based on evi­dence from a recent­ly pub­lished study that he was more than five times more like­ly to be sen­tenced to death because of his race and the race of the vic­tim in his…

Policy Issues

Costs

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Innocence

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Jul 15, 2021

Hidden Costs: Liability Judgments for Wrongful Capital Prosecutions Cost Taxpayers in Death-Penalty States Hundreds of Millions of Dollars

Studies have con­sis­tent­ly found that a sys­tem of crim­i­nal law in which the death penal­ty is avail­able as a pun­ish­ment is far more expen­sive than a sys­tem in which the most severe pun­ish­ment is life with­out parole or a long prison term. Now, as the num­ber of mur­der exon­er­a­tions mounts across the United States, a pre­vi­ous­ly hid­den cost is emerg­ing: the cost of lia­bil­i­ty for police and pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct asso­ci­at­ed with the wrong­ful use or threat­ened use of the death…

Policy Issues

Innocence

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Public Opinion

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Recent Legislative Activity

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Feb 23, 2021

Ohio Legislators Launch Bipartisan Effort to Repeal State’s Death Penalty

A bipar­ti­san group of leg­is­la­tors has announced the intro­duc­tion of a bill to repeal Ohio’s death penal­ty. In a vir­tu­al press con­fer­ence on February 18, 2021, four Republican and four Democratic leg­is­la­tors spoke about the lat­est effort to end cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the Buckeye…

Policy Issues

Innocence

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Prosecutorial Accountability

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Sep 10, 2020

Eight Years After Exoneration, Court Declares Joe D’Ambrosio ​‘Wrongfully Imprisoned’

Eight years after his exon­er­a­tion from death row, an Ohio tri­al court judge has declared that Joe D’Ambrosio (pic­tured) was ​“wrong­ful­ly impris­oned.” The August 31, 2020 rul­ing by Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court Judge Michael Russo moves D’Ambrosio one step clos­er to receiv­ing com­pen­sa­tion for the more than two decades he spent on death row as a result of prosecutorial…

Policy Issues

Innocence

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Prosecutorial Accountability

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Apr 06, 2020

Outlier Counties: Melvin Bonnell Seeks New Trial After Defense Discovers Evidence That Cuyahoga County Prosecutors Had Withheld for Decades

Ohio death-row pris­on­er Melvin Bonnell (pic­tured) has asked the Ohio Supreme Court to vacate his con­vic­tion and death sen­tence after his lawyers dis­cov­ered phys­i­cal evi­dence from his case that Cuyahoga County pros­e­cu­tors had repeat­ed­ly insist­ed since the mid-1990s had been lost or…