Two Reports from Ohio Draw Starkly Different Conclusions about the Future of the State’s Death Penalty System

Ohio’s cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment sys­tem has come into sharp focus with the release of two reports that exam­ine four decades of the state’s death penal­ty record and draw stark­ly dif­fer­ent con­clu­sions about the future of Ohio’s death penal­ty. On March 30, Ohioans to Stop Executions (OTSE) pub­lished Beyond Reasonable Doubt: Confronting the Wrongful Conviction Crisis in the State of Ohio, doc­u­ment­ing the record of mis­takes and errors that result­ed in 12 exon­er­a­tions. ​“The death penal­ty in Ohio is a sys­tem defined more by its capac­i­ty for error than its pur­suit of jus­tice,” the report states, con­clud­ing, ​“It’s time for Ohio to end its death penal­ty.” Two days lat­er, out­go­ing Attorney General Dave Yost released his eighth and final Capital Crimes Report, call­ing the state’s years-long pause on exe­cu­tions ​“a mock­ery of the jus­tice sys­tem” and com­plain­ing that Ohio has pro­vid­ed death-sen­tenced pris­on­ers with ​“more than their fair share of due process.” AG Yost urges law­mak­ers to pass leg­is­la­tion that would allow exe­cu­tions to resume.

Beyond Reasonable Doubt cen­ters on data OTSE argues Ohioans can no longer ignore: since the state rein­stat­ed cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in 1981, it has exe­cut­ed 56 peo­ple and exon­er­at­ed 12 oth­ers from death row — mark­ing one exon­er­a­tion for every five exe­cu­tions car­ried out. Collectively, OTSE notes that these 12 men lost 245 years of their lives to wrong­ful impris­on­ment. ​“It turns out that Ohio has a mas­sive wrong­ful con­vic­tion prob­lem, far worse than any­one imag­ined,” said Kevin Werner, Executive Director of OTSE. Mr. Werner added that “[a]ttempts to restart exe­cu­tions will result in the exe­cu­tions of inno­cent peo­ple, and no one wants that.”

In addi­tion to the 12 indi­vid­u­als who have been wrong­ful­ly sen­tenced to death, Beyond Reasonable Doubt iden­ti­fies an addi­tion­al 12 ​“shad­ow exon­er­a­tions,” or cas­es in which indi­vid­u­als faced cap­i­tal indict­ments and were sen­tenced to life in prison rather than death and were lat­er proven inno­cent. The same issues are present in both groups of 12 cas­es: pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct, coerced tes­ti­mo­ny, false eye­wit­ness iden­ti­fi­ca­tions, and false or mis­lead­ing foren­sic evi­dence. ​“The records of the 24 men exon­er­at­ed after cap­i­tal indict­ments are no ​‘suc­cess sto­ries’ of the legal sys­tem; they are indict­ments of it,” the report states. ​“They prove that in Ohio, the dif­fer­ence between a free man and a dead man is often noth­ing more than a lucky pub­lic records request or the per­sis­tence of postconviction counsel.”

AG Yost’s 2025 Capital Crimes Report, the prod­uct of an annu­al statu­to­ry require­ment, pro­vides an in-depth pro­ce­dur­al his­to­ry of each death sen­tence imposed in the state since 1981, and calls for an end to Ohio’s ​“unof­fi­cial mora­to­ri­um.” The report notes 56 peo­ple have been exe­cut­ed in Ohio since 1981, but none since July 2018. In the same peri­od, 41 peo­ple on death row have died of nat­ur­al caus­es or sui­cide. Ohio now has the nation’s fifth-largest death row pop­u­la­tion, with 113 pris­on­ers sen­tenced to death. According to the report, on aver­age, death-sen­tenced pris­on­ers in Ohio spend near­ly 23 years on death row, which AG Yost attrib­ut­es to ​“numer­ous avenues of appeal.” AG Yost’s report calls the cur­rent sys­tem ​“a cost­ly waste of tax­pay­er dol­lars.” Despite the state’s ​“unof­fi­cial mora­to­ri­um,” the Ohio Legislative Service Commission esti­mates that the cur­rent cost of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment ranges from $116 mil­lion to $348 million.

AG Yost notes an addi­tion­al rea­son for the delay in resum­ing exe­cu­tions: the unwill­ing­ness of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies to sup­ply lethal injec­tion drugs. Ohio law sole­ly autho­rizes the use of lethal injec­tion as a method of exe­cu­tion, and AG Yost has called on the state leg­is­la­ture to adopt pend­ing leg­is­la­tion that would autho­rize nitro­gen gas suf­fo­ca­tion as an addi­tion­al method. He also expressed hope that a January 2025 exec­u­tive order from President Donald Trump, aimed at secur­ing states’ access to lethal injec­tion drugs, would result in a restart of execution.

The Capital Crimes Report notes that in 2025, one death row pris­on­er had his charges dis­missed; Beyond Reasonable Doubt high­light­ed the same man’s sto­ry: Elwood Jones. In December 2025, Mr. Jones became the 12^thper­son exon­er­at­ed in Ohio after being wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death. He had been con­vict­ed in the 1994 beat­ing death of Rhoda Nathan in her hotel room. After a judge grant­ed him a new tri­al in 2022, a months-long pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al review found that the Hamilton County prosecutor’s office had with­held thou­sands of pages of evi­dence, includ­ing mate­ri­als that point­ed towards his inno­cence. Modern foren­sic tech­nol­o­gy exclud­ed Mr. Jones as the per­pe­tra­tor, and on December 12, 2025, pros­e­cu­tors dis­missed all charges. Mr. Jones, who had sev­er­al sched­uled exe­cu­tion dates, reflect­ed on the state’s ​“unof­fi­cial mora­to­ri­um,” not­ing to reporters in con­nec­tion with the release of Beyond Reasonable Doubt that “[i]f they had the drugs, I would be dead.”

The two reports arrive as Ohio law­mak­ers debate the death penalty’s future. House Bill 36 would autho­rize nitro­gen gas suf­fo­ca­tion as a method of exe­cu­tion and crim­i­nal­ize the dis­clo­sure of infor­ma­tion about exe­cu­tion per­son­nel and drug sup­pli­ers. House Bill 72, intro­duced by two Republican law­mak­ers, would repeal the death penal­ty out­right. A com­pan­ion bill to HB 72, Senate Bill 134, has also been intro­duced. House Speaker Matt Huffman told reporters in February that while a grow­ing num­ber of Republican law­mak­ers sup­port abo­li­tion, they do not con­sti­tute a major­i­ty of the cau­cus. Governor Mike DeWine has con­tin­ued to post­pone all sched­uled exe­cu­tion dates in Ohio and has sig­naled his intent to make a new state­ment regard­ing his per­son­al posi­tion on the death penal­ty. The ACLU of Ohio has urged him to use his clemen­cy pow­er to com­mute exist­ing death sentences.