Ohio holds third highest execution rate

Executions by state

Source: Death Penalty Information Center

Source: Ohio Dept. of Rehabilitation and Correction

Despite a six-month hiatus, Ohio executed more people than all but two other states in 2011 as the state carried out death sentences imposed in the 1980s and 1990s, according to a year-end study released today by the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, D.C.

Ohio’s five executions were exceeded only by Texas, with 13, and Alabama, with six. Ohio would have been second among the states had several sentences not been stayed by a federal judge and by Gov. John Kasich, said Richard Dieter, executive director of the center. The state accounted for five of the six executions in the Midwest.

And the Ohio Supreme Court already has scheduled 13 additional executions from January 2012 through September 2013.

Ohio is the only state to have “real” execution dates, ones that aren’t certain to be delayed by appeals, on the books for 2013, Dieter said. Experts said the court could schedule more in 2012 and 2013. None of those on the current list is from Dayton-area counties.

There are 146 men and one woman on Ohio’s death row, according to state prison officials. The state has executed 46 men by lethal injection since the death penalty resumed in 1999. As the Dayton Daily News reported in 2009, inmates are much more likely to be released on appeal and by commutation than they are to be executed.

Ohio had only two new death sentences to date in 2011, compared with 21 in 1985, the center reported. That reflects a national trend, as more county prosecutors, juries and judges opt to charge and sentence killers under a statute that allows life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.

The current pace of executions “reflects an earlier enthusiasm for the death penalty that’s not as evident today,” Dieter said. “That’s kind of the system churning along.”

The center reported that U.S. courts handed down 78 new death sentences in 2011, the lowest annual number since capital punishment was reinstated in 1976. Polling also shows that while the death penalty still enjoys considerable support, it is eroding amidst news of numerous DNA exonerations, the center said.

Jeff Welbaum, chief of the Ohio attorney general’s criminal justice section, said a 2005 law that allowed prosecutors to seek a sentence of life without parole instead of death has been a factor in reducing death penalty prosecutions and sentences.

But Chuck Wille, who heads the attorney general’s capital crimes unit, said the biggest factor in new sentences is the number of heinous crimes committed in a given year.

“I think the public still supports capital punishment and that hasn’t diminished much because of exonerations,” Wille said.

Also on Wednesday, Ohio Supreme Court Justice Paul E. Pfeifer, who co-sponsored Ohio’s 1981 death penalty law as a state senator, testified in favor of legislation abolishing the death penalty and making life without the possibility of parole the harshest punishment.

“The death penalty in Ohio has become what I call a death lottery,” Pfeifer told the House Criminal Justice Committee. He said some county prosecutors, particularly in Hamilton and Trumbull counties, are more likely than others to seek the death penalty, and capital punishment, originally designed for “the worst of the worst,” no longer serves Ohio.

Pfeifer, a Republican serving his fourth term on the Supreme Court, was among a number of opponents testifying at the bill’s first hearing. The bill is unlikely to pass, said committee Chairman Rep. Lynn Slaby, an Akron area Republican and former Summit County prosecutor.

Ohio has become a key state in the ongoing death penalty debate, partly because of high-profile breakdowns in the state’s execution procedures. In July, U.S. District Judge Gregory Frost stayed one inmate’s lethal injection because of the state’s “haphazard” application of its protocols, leading to other postponements and a six-month gap in executions. The state revised its rules, and Frost accepted them, clearing the way for the Nov. 15 execution of Reginald Brooks of Cuyahoga County.

In September, Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor seated a committee to review the state’s death penalty law and possibly recommend changes.

William Hershey of the Columbus bureau contributed to this report. Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2264.