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Ellen Belcher is the Dayton Daily News opinion pages editor. She writes about state government, education, the environment, higher education and all things Dayton.
Martin Gottlieb is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He focuses on the political process itself and does such national issues as war, the economy, taxes and Social Security, as well as a hodge-podge of local and state issues.Home > Blogs > A Matter of Opinion > Archives > 2011 > January > 30
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Guest column: For victims or taxpayers, death penalty no solution
This commentary was written by Terry Collins, a retired director of the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction.
During my 32-year career with the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, I was a warden, regional director, assistant director and then director. I observed the execution of 33 men between 2001 and 2010.
All 33 times, in the back of my mind, I asked myself:
Had all the reviews and appeals gotten this case right? Did the process make certain — absolutely — that there was no mistake? I wondered that because I also had walked people out of prison who were found not guilty after years of incarceration.
Our judicial and corrections system is among the finest in the world. We have some of the best attorneys, judges and corrections personnel anywhere. It is the envy of many nations. Yet we continue to be one of the few industrialized nations to carry out the death penalty — even though we know mistakes happen periodically.
Justice Paul Pfeifer, who recently said the death penalty should be abolished, wants a debate about the policy.
Pfeifer’s remarks received a lot of public attention, in part, because he wrote the death penalty law when he was a legislator, and he’s observed its implementation from the state’s highest court.
He believes it’s exceedingly difficult for the death penalty to be administered justly. The death penalty is expensive, often inefficient and always time-consuming. Too often our justice system does not place the worst of the worst on death row.
I saw some of the worst offenders in our prison system, and often they were not on death row. It surprised me, at times, to see who did end up on death row. I think this disparity is important for state leaders to address.
I am convinced that the death penalty is not a responsible financial policy. It costs millions of dollars to execute people in Ohio, more than life imprisonment. Those costs begin at trail and continue through appeals to pay for lawyers, judges and prisons.
The county and state resources that go into two separate trials in death penalty cases (one to decide innocence or guilt and the second to decide life or death) adds up quickly before anyone spends a single day on death row.
Then the appeals begin, compounding these enormous costs.
It is also expensive to maintain death rows once offenders begin to serve their time there. Costs related to the death penalty should be of serious concern, given our state’s need for cost-effective judicial reform.
There is another cost that we do not always consider: that borne by victims’ families. It is traumatic for the families of victims to be recalled into courts year after year due to so many death penalty appeals.
I saw the emotions of the victims’ families. An increasing number of families ask the state not to pursue the death penalty so that they are not faced with the painful task of attending appeals hearings, and so they can achieve closure.
Life imprisonment without parole offers justice that is swift, certain, effectively severe and perhaps more sensitive to the needs of healing victims’ families.
Since life without parole became an option in Ohio, the number of death sentences has been drastically reduced. Many have deemed this alternative to be a reasonable measure and a way to keep Ohio communities safe.
Whether they support or oppose the death penalty, Ohioans should take notice that one of the greatest critics of capital punishment is the same man who once supported it and worked to make it law.
The reasonable course for state officials is to begin to have serious conversations about whether Ohio’s death penalty remains necessary, fair and effective. My experience tells me that our justice system can be even more effective and fair without death rows.
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Editorial: Pension rules can change, still be fair
If Ted Strickland had been re-elected governor, there would not be this fast push to deal with Ohio’s public-employee pension problem.
Something would eventually have happened because a reckoning has been coming; responsible Republicans and Democrats both know something has to give. But things are happening very quickly.
Elections do have consequences.
The sense of urgency is right. The longer solutions are put off, the more pain there’s going to be.
In testimony before lawmakers last week, William Estabrook, executive director of the Ohio Police and Fire Pension Fund (and a former city manager in Dayton), took a verbal lashing from Republican lawmakers who said his cutbacks didn’t go far enough.
The police and fire fund is in the most financial trouble, yet the state’s other four funds were still being more aggressive about proposing changes.
That didn’t sit well. One lawmaker accused Mr. Estabrook (who may or may not believe what his board told him to tell the lawmakers) of trying to make the legislature be the bad guys.
“You’re leaving it to us to do the heavy lifting or dirty work,” said Rep. Jay Hottinger, R-Newark.
There are myriad ways to bring the pension funds’ costs down. Some of those changes — upping the retirement age, cutting back on cost-of-living increases, increasing years-of-service rules — will be a shock to some people, but there’s nothing draconian on the table.
As with anything complicated, though, some proposals are a two-edged sword. Consider, for instance, that if public employees stay on the payroll longer because they can’t retire as early as they can now, that affects how much school districts and governments pay out; older employees typically earn more and insuring them costs more.
That doesn’t mean that the retirement age shouldn’t increase. But it does illustrate how fixing one problem can create new issues.
Lawmakers have drawn a line in the sand, saying that one solution that’s off the table is increasing the share public employers — i.e. taxpayers — pay into the pension systems. (The current rates are between 14 percent and 26.5 percent, depending on the pension plan.)
As frustrated as some public employees and their unions are about the changes, they need to realize that things could be worse. Many local government officials, for instance, at least privately bemoan the fact that they’re contributing 19.5 percent of police officers’ salaries, and 24 percent of firefighters’ pay, to their pension plans.
If they had their way, there would be a cut in those percentages. But nobody is talking about that. That is a huge concession to the reality that angering police and firefighters is something politicians aren’t eager to do.
Police and firefighters do have special circumstances. They retire earlier than most people because it’s ridiculous to have 55-year-olds running up ladders or down alleys.
These professions require a certain amount of physical fitness, and they’re hard on people’s bodies. Yes, departments always want a contingent of experienced people in their ranks, but there are only so many supervisors and desk jobs that are really needed.
Still, there are rules that can be changed without shortchanging people who’ve risked their lives to keep people safe.
Overtime, for example, is a problem in many departments, and a lot of people’s overtime goes up in their last years before retirement. The resulting higher pay then artificially inflates pensions for decades.
Disability retirements are another area that even police and firefighters complain about among themselves; they know — in fact, resent — that some of their peers game the system and are running up costs.
One risk in bringing the systems quickly into financial stability is that low-hanging fruit — practices that may not save goo-gobs, but that still need to be eliminated — will be ignored. This is the time for people who know and have seen what’s wrong with the pension plans to speak up.
As Ohio’s problems go, this is one that’s fixable. The changes that are being contemplated are only awful to some because the rules have been so sweet.
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