Schmidt, of Loveland, once a member of Congress, and Rep. Adam Miller, of Columbus, are co-sponsoring a House repeal measure, House Bill 259.
And in the background, Republican Gov. Mike DeWine, of Cedarville, continues to delay scheduled executions in Ohio for ostensibly technical reasons that hint at what may possibly be underlying doubts about capital punishment.
According to the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, there are 121 men on Ohio’s Death Row, and one woman.
Last week, DeWine yet again postponed a scheduled execution — that of Scott Group, of suburban Youngstown, sentenced to death for a 1997 aggravated murder, scheduled to be executed on Jan. 24, 2024. DeWine reset the execution date for Feb. 17, 2027 — coincidentally, a month after DeWine’s term as governor will have expired.
DeWine issued the reprieve because of “ongoing problems involving the willingness of pharmaceutical suppliers to provide [lethal injection] drugs to the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction … without endangering other Ohioans.”
Ohio hasn’t executed anyone since DeWine took office in January 2019. Ohio had resumed executions in 1999, under Republican then-Gov. Bob Taft, with the execution by lethal injection of Wilford Berry Jr. Including Berry, Ohio has executed 56 inmates since executions resumed. Until Berry’s, Ohio last execution had been early in 1963, during Republican then-Gov. James A. Rhodes’s first administration.
It’s fair to ask if DeWine’s hesitation about executions is really rooted in an essentially technical question about methods of carrying out the death penalty or in a fundamental doubt about capital punishment.
DeWine, after all, has long been committed to the anti-abortion, right-to-life perspective. And, DeWine, a Catholic, surely knows that the Catholic bishops of Ohio, who oppose abortion, also oppose capital punishment, and see it, too, as a “life” issue.
The Statehouse dilemma is that the General Assembly as now peopled appears — pending persuasion — more inclined to see abortion alone as a life issue, and capital punishment as something a (fairly) convicted killer justly deserves.
Gallup reported in 2021 that “the current 54% of U.S. adults who say they favor the death penalty for convicted murderers is essentially unchanged from readings over the past four years.” That said, “[it] remains lower than any other measurement since March 1972 (50%).”
Even the state’s law-and-order attorney general, Republican David Yost — a death-penalty supporter and likely candidate for governor — has said something must change in Ohio.
According to Yost’s most recent annual Capital Crimes Report, “Ohio’s current system … produces churn, waste, and endless lawsuits and nothing else.”
Also, according to the Yost report, of inmates executed in Ohio beginning with Berry, the average time spend on Death Row was 17.19 years. And of those executed, almost 34% were African-American. (African-Americans comprise 13.3% of Ohio’s population.)
It may be a vain hope to think that the General Assembly, given its current proclivities will consign Ohio’s death penalty to history. The fact is the death penalty is a relic of barbarism.
It’s to the great credit of Antonio, Huffman, Schmidt, and Miller that they’re taking on an issue this tough in a General Assembly that much prefers easy-win politics.
Thomas Suddes is a former legislative reporter with The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and writes from Ohio University. You can reach him at tsuddes@gmail.com.
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