Death penalty opponents push for elimination in Ohio

By: Susan Tebben – Ohio Capital Journal

Opponents of the death penalty are once again urging the Ohio legislature to eliminate the practice in the state.

In a hearing with the Senate Judiciary Committee, advocacy groups and family members of murder victims alike came together to ask for passage of a bill that would abolish the death penalty.

“This is a question of overall public policy; it’s a question of is the system applying the death penalty consistently across a wide range of cases,” said Robert Dunham, director of the Death Penalty Policy Project.

Senate Bill 101 would ban the death penalty, a practice that in Ohio has been few and far between in recent years, and has essentially stopped during the DeWine administration as the state has been unable to obtain lethal injection drugs from pharmaceutical companies. With Republicans controlling supermajorities in both chambers of the Ohio General Assembly, the effort faces an uphill battle even with some bipartisan support.

The Death Penalty Policy Project did an analysis of more than three decades of FBI homicide data and law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty, and found that after 50 years and 1,600 executions nationwide, “the public and police are actually safer in states that don’t have the death penalty, or have recently abolished the death penalty, than they are in states that have the death penalty.”

“Moreover, the states that are now most actively carrying out executions are among the least safe for the public and the most dangerous for police,” Dunham told the committee. “They have failed to execute their way into violence prevention.”

Jonathan Mann has the unique perspective of going through the murder of his father in 2017, and asking the state not to use the death penalty to punish his father’s killer. He said he believed in the death penalty before his father’s death, but as his experience continued, he found the process “does not represent family members of murder victims.”

“You are not representing family members of victims adequately, whether they believe in the death penalty or not,” Mann said. “The death penalty is not working. It is not working; you can not say it’s working.”

Bryan Corbett saw one of his family members wrongfully accused of murder, and the reputation and potential of this member of his family was damaged after spending more than six years on death row before being exonerated. Corbett said the conviction was lifted after it was found “junk science,” “hypnotized witnesses,” and other evidence deemed inadmissible was used in the case. That, and two men confessed to the crime after more than a decade.

As a Christian pastor and a man who has witnessed the flaws in the justice system, Corbett said the state can’t continue to use the death penalty as an option.

“I would simply ask: who among us is qualified to cast that stone,” Corbett said to the committee. “Who among us is qualified to flip that switch and end a life?”

State Rep. Matt Dolan, R-Chagrin Falls, pondered whether it was up to the legislature to decide whether or not the death penalty should be an option, when the state leaves those decisions up to a jury of peers.

“Should this legislature take that away from the individuals or should we look to whether this should be a statewide issue and let Ohioans … make that decision,” Dolan asked Dunham.

Dunham pushed back, saying juries are only deciding cases based on the information at hand, and can’t consider the factors of, for example, withheld evidence or evidence that “the defense had failed to investigate because of poor representation.”

“(Legislators) are the ones who set public policy, so when we look at the death penalty as a policy, I think you are the people who should be making that determination,” Dunham said.

The measure is one of many similar bills that have been introduced in the state over the years, but while the measure has been the subject of much testimony in support of death penalty elimination, the legislature has not shown much support for the issue.

One group stood in opposition to the current bill in last week’s committee hearing. The Ohio Prosecuting Attorneys Association submitted written testimony saying the association “continues to believe that this topic is important enough that the public should be given the opportunity to decide whether or not Ohio continues to have capital punishment.”

Louis Tobin, executive director of the Ohio Prosecuting Attorneys Association cited a study by Claremont McKenna College in response to Gallup and Pew Research Center polls showing support for the repeal of the death penalty and diminishing support for the practice in the United States.

In the Claremont McKenna poll, survey-takers were asked if they supported the death penalty when considering specific crimes, rather than general opposition or support for the death penalty.

“What they found was that support for the death penalty is much more widespread than either Gallup or Pew have reported,” Tobin wrote.

Statistics from the poll cited by Tobin show 10 of the 15 murder types selected as part of the survey — including raping and murdering a child and being a part of a terrorist attack — “garnered at least 60% support.”

The only true measure of support is “a vote of the people,” Tobin concluded.

“If the proponents of Senate Bill 101 believe their own polling and their own argument that there is not majority support for the death penalty, then they should have no problem agreeing to allow the public to vote and to decide on the future of the death penalty in Ohio,” Tobin wrote.

The OPAA executive director has expressed support for a bill that would change the way capital punishment is done in Ohio, which would add nitrogen hypoxia to the list of protocols that can be used. The method asphyxiates a condemned person by replacing the air they breathe, a mixture of mostly nitrogen and oxygen, with pure nitrogen.

With the current General Assembly term expiring at the end of the month, the bill may not have much chance of getting by this time around without a last-minute burst of legislative support. Along with its bipartisan sponsors, Senate Minority Leader Nickie Antonio, D-Lakewood, and state Sen. Steve Huffman, R-Tipp City, the bill only has 10 cosponsors signed on in support.

Any bills that aren’t approved by the end of the month will need to be reintroduced and restart the legislative process in the new year.

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Susan Tebben

Susan Tebben is an award-winning journalist with a decade of experience covering Ohio news, including courts and crime, Appalachian social issues, government, education, diversity and culture. She has worked for The Newark Advocate, The Glasgow (KY) Daily Times, The Athens Messenger, and WOUB Public Media. She has also had work featured on National Public Radio.

Ohio Capital Journal is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.

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