Ohio gubernatorial candidates mum on death penalty stance
Republican Gov. Mike DeWine has said it’s up to Ohio’s next governor how to proceed with executions.
Ohio has had an effective moratorium on executions since DeWine, who helped write the state’s death penalty law, entered office in 2019. Last week, the governor issued three reprieves for inmates on Ohio’s death row, saying the state can’t procure the drugs needed to carry out the executions.
“My justification for voting for the death penalty and, really, kind of my rationale was that I felt that it was, in some cases, a deterrent, and it would save lives,” DeWine told NPR in June. “It would cause some individuals not to actually commit the crime.
“And what really, I think, changed my mind is we went back and looked at the statistics in Ohio, and Ohio is not dissimilar from other states,” the governor added. “But of the last 10 people to be executed in the state of Ohio, the average – the mean – the average wait time was over two decades, so it was 21 years. And it seems to me that when you look at that, it’s just hard to make the case today that it is, in fact, a deterrent.”
So how will the next governor proceed? It’s hard to say, as the campaigns of Republican Vivek Ramaswamy and Democrat Amy Acton did not respond to requests for comment.
Cleveland.com reported that Ramaswamy said he would allow executions in limited cases, while Acton hasn’t revealed her stance.
The last execution in the state took place on July 18, 2018. Now, eight inmates have 2027 execution dates, Statehouse News Bureau reported.
DeWine previously said that of the 337 people sentenced to death, 41 died of either natural causes or by suicide. Another 89 were removed from death row by the courts. Just 56, roughly 16.6%, have been executed.
Ohio Prosecuting Attorneys Association Executive Director Lou Tobin told Statehouse News Bureau that the governor “has already added eight years of undue delay to carrying out these sentences.”
“Now he’s adding undue delay beyond his term and hindering the ability of the next governor to enforce the law,” Tobin said in a statement, according to the report. “These decisions should be left to the next governor.”
