Entries tagged with “Cuyahoga County, OH”
Policy Issues
Arbitrariness
,Race
,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
,Innocence
,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
,Public Opinion
,Recent Legislative Activity
,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
,Prosecutorial Accountability
,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
,Prosecutorial Accountability
,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…