Yost indirectly criticizes DeWine by calling stalled executions of inmates a ‘mockery’ of justice
Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost recently called to end the unofficial moratorium on the death penalty, calling the current situation a “mockery of the justice system.”
In doing so, he effectively criticized the unofficial anti-death penalty stance of Republican Gov. Mike DeWine, as activists urge the Ohio government not to allow the executions to happen due to the possibility of a wrongful conviction.
Yost urged an end to the moratorium in his Wednesday press release, in which he also mentioned the release of his eighth and final “Capital Crimes report.”
“During my years as attorney general, not a single sentence has been carried out – a mockery of the justice system and of the dead and their families,” he said in a release. “For the worst-of-the-worst killers, Ohio is wandering in a wilderness of lawlessness and a desert of justice.”
According to the report, Ohio’s death row wait time now stretches longer than 22 years, with an inmate more likely to die either from natural causes or by suicide than from a sentence, which resulted in Ohio ranking 12th of 28 states for its wait time.
“Those on Death Row have had more than their fair share of due process – and second and third helpings of overdue process,” Yost said. “It is past time that we do right by the victims and punish the monsters who killed them.”
By saying this, Yost indirectly criticized DeWine, who has been delaying every scheduled execution since January 2019, while blaming pharmaceutical companies for not wanting their product to be used and, therefore, associated with the death penalty via a lethal injection, according to The Statehouse News Bureau.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio, a left-wing organization that opposes capital punishment, asked DeWine to grant some death row inmates clemency.
“There is a real opportunity to address Ohio’s broken capital punishment system by reviewing individual cases and commuting sentences before it’s too late,” ACLU of Ohio Chief Policy and Advocacy Officer Jocelyn Rosnick told The Bureau in an email statement.
In addition to ACLU Ohio, other organizations also opposed the death penalty, citing wrongful convictions as a reason to prevent capital punishment, according to another report by The Bureau.
“We just can’t ignore the issues of wrongful conviction any longer,” Kevin Werner, executive director of Ohioans to Stop Executions, told the news source. “We just can’t get it right.”
Ohioans to Stop Executions also said that innocent people could lose their lives simply because evidence was withheld or witnesses were coerced.
According to the news source, some state Republican lawmakers have become sympathetic to the idea of getting rid of the death penalty, but House Speaker Matt Huffman, R-Lima, said in February that it’s not a majority of the majority caucus.
“If it got to the point where an overwhelming number of my caucus said, ‘We want to do that,’ no, I’m not going to block that from coming to the floor,” Huffman said. “I just don’t think that’s going to happen.”
