At a press conference Tuesday, June 16th, Republican Governor Mike DeWine said that Ohio should abolish the state’s use of the death penalty. DeWine, who has repeatedly postponed executions over the past seven years, used the Tuesday press conference to confirm his change of heart on the policy he helped write as a state legislator 45 years ago.
DeWine said that data indicates the death penalty is not serving as a deterrent to violent crime, which he had always believed was its moral imperative.
“I do not believe that argument today can be successfully made, nor do I believe that there’s any chance in the future the facts that I’ve cited to support that belief will change,” DeWine said. “Therefore, I believe Ohio should abolish the death penalty.”
To bolster his case, DeWine referred to charts and graphs detailing the diminishing number of death sentences meted out by courts and showing the exceedingly long wait times that elapse as legal appeals play out for those on death row. He said condemned murderers are increasingly unlikely to ever be executed, sometimes dying by natural causes or by suicide before their execution date arrives.
“In summary, each decade that the death penalty has been in effect, the chances of a murderer getting executed get more and more and more remote,” DeWine said. He also cited years of pain brought to victims’ loved ones by the delays and the toll taken on the mental health of state employees who serve on execution teams.
DeWine, facing a term limit in December, said he felt compelled to share his observations now, having had 50 years of experience with the issue from the time he was a young county prosecutor, through being a congressman and U.S. senator, then as Ohio’s attorney general. But he said his outright opposition has only crystallized over the past year.
DeWine has already said he expects no further executions during his term, but he said the compelling nature of the death penalty data remains the same whether you include the past seven years, when executions have been on hold, or not.
Kevin Werner, executive director of Ohioans to Stop Executions, said the governor’s decision is in line with “an evolution on the death penalty” across the political spectrum in Ohio. “Nobody supports a system that harms victim families, convicts innocent people and wastes millions of dollars without a shred of improved public safety,” Werner said.
23 states have already ended the death penalty. Ohio could be next.
Note to California Governor Gavin Newsom; California needs to join this list.
