End Ohio's death penalty

Ohio should follow Virginia's lead and abolish the death penalty. If the Old Dominion State, which The Associated Press reported has executed more people in its history than any other state, can do it, then so can Ohio. Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, a Democrat, is expected to sign the repeal, which the state legislature approved Monday, just days after a bipartisan group of Ohio lawmakers announced a push to do the same in the Buckeye State. Once again leading the charge is state Sen. Nickie Antonio, D-Lakewood. "It's time for the state of Ohio to take the compassionate, pragmatic and prudent step to abolish the death penalty, which has been found to be expensive, impractical, unjust, inhumane and even erroneous," Antonio said last week. She's right. There are far too many problems with the death penalty, including that the criminal justice system sometimes gets it wrong. The number of death row inmates exonerated through DNA and other evidence continues to grow. The Death Penalty Information Center's list of death row inmates across the nation who had been exonerated since 1973 stood at 162 people in July 2018. There were 185 exonerees, including 11 from Ohio, on the list Tuesday. Moreover, the death penalty is unevenly imposed. What could be a capital case in one county might not be in another, based on how local prosecutors decide to handle the matter. Then there are the disturbing racial disparities in who is being sentenced to die. For example, of the people cleared after being sentenced to death in Ohio, eight of the 11 were Black. Beyond that, Ohio has run into problems carrying out executions. At times the condemned have clearly suffered as the lethal drugs took hold, something that is cruel and unusual. Additionally, the state has struggled to procure the drugs necessary to carry out executions. Those issues have led to an unofficial moratorium on executions in the state, which hasn't executed anyone since July 18, 2018, when Robert Van Hook was put to death for the 1985 killing of David Self in Cincinnati. Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, has said executions are unlikely to resume until the state finds a new method to carry them out, but that doesn't appear to be a priority for him right now. It's hard to believe that the majority of Ohioans would support hanging, the electric chair or firing squad as acceptable methods of execution. Those remain just as barbaric as they were when Ohio and other states shifted to lethal injection with its veneer of bloodless sterility. Even DeWine, a former prosecutor who helped write Ohio's capital punishment law when he was in the state legislature, has said he's grown "skeptical" of whether the death penalty is an effective deterrent to crime. Ohio is hardly unique in facing calls to end executions. Pressure to abolish the federal death penalty increased in the waning months of the Trump administration, when the federal government resumed executions following a 17-year hiatus. In total 13 federal inmates were put to death between July and January. President Joe Biden should push Congress to eliminate the federal death penalty and not allow executions on his watch. In the meantime, Ohio has slightly chipped away at its death penalty. In January, DeWine signed legislation banning the death penalty for defendants with severe mental illness at the time of the offense. It was progress, but not nearly enough. Lorain County Prosecutor J.D. Tomlinson, a Democrat who took office in January, told us he understood the feelings of those who favor the death penalty, including the families of some homicide victims. He even said he would feel the same way if someone in his family were a victim. "The difficulty with pursuing the death penalty, however, is that it is not practical," Tomlinson said. "It is costly and it is almost never imposed." Tomlinson said that because of how long it takes for executions to take place, he suspected that most of the 135 people on Ohio's death row probably would end up dying from some other cause before they could be executed. (Two Lorain County men, Stanley Jalowiec and Freddie McNeill, are on death row.) "When the option of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole is available, it is a much better choice for the taxpayer, and it is just as safe," he said. Not only that, life in prison is a harsh punishment. Virginia will become the 23rd state to put an end to the death penalty. Ohio should be the 24th. — The (Elyria) Chronicle-Telegram