From education to marijuana: What Ohio lawmakers want to accomplish in 2023
Ending the death penalty included in some of lawmakers’ highest priorities for this General Assembly
Reflections: The Death Penalty is not justice.
Although HB 183 and SB 103, identical companion bills that would repeal Ohio’s death penalty did not pass during this most recent Ohio General Assembly, the bills made more progress than ever before. There is bipartisan support in the Statehouse, and public opinion is on our side.
Read ACLU’s reflection of efforts to repeal the death penalty in 2021 and 2022
Groups against death penalty optimistic in pursuit of full ban in Ohio
Groups pursuing a full ban death penalty ban in Ohio are optimistic heading into a new year with a new state legislature.
GOP law-and-order pitch didn’t win many converts, expert says
Republicans nationwide went big on claims that crime was rampant in our cities and that it was crucial to elect hard-nosed conservatives to stop it. The November midterms showed that those appeals failed to win over many voters who weren’t already part of the GOP’s rural and exurban base, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center said Thursday.
Report: Executions continued decline but many ‘botched’
Public support and use of the death penalty in 2022 continued its more than two-decade decline in the U.S., and many of the executions that were carried out during the year were “botched” or highly problematic, an annual report on capital punishment says.
Read more coverage of the end-of-year report from the Death Penalty Information Center her
State lawmakers cross party lines to work together, pushing for clemency for Cleveland prisoner on death row
A bipartisan group of state lawmakers is pushing to free a Cleveland man who is on death row for a 1984 rape and murder that he maintains he didn’t commit.
Anthony Apanovitch, who was freed for nearly two-and-a-half years after a judge in 2015 determined DNA evidence cleared him of some of the conduct for which he was convicted in the attack of Mary Anne Flynn, asked the Ohio Parole Board in April to recommend that Gov. Mike DeWine grant him clemency.
‘I have presided over the funerals of murder victims.’ Death penalty isn’t closure
“Many of my fellow Christians, including those in the Ohio legislature, are pro-life (like me) when it pertains to abortion, but either support capital punishment for convicted murderers or have never really thought about it.”
Read more from the founding pastor of Vineyard Columbus, Rich Nathan, here in the Columbus Dispatch
Ohio’s death penalty is bad for business
“I opened my company here in Ohio in 2011 for the same reasons many others do: The state is a great place to do business. But to keep funneling tax dollars into something that doesn’t work demonstrates fiscal irresponsibility, with authorities more focused on outdated notions of revenge than they are on spending wisely.”
Read more from Ohio business leader John Rush here, on Crain’s Cleveland Business
Experts: Trauma builds, ending for some at death row
“Invariably, the crimes over which people land on death row are soaked in trauma, often consisting of the most violent deaths suffered by sympathetic victims. But it’s also often the case that those accused of perpetrating them have traumatic histories of their own.”
Exoneree believes faith saved him: Advocates speak out against death penalty
“Kwame Ajamu, Derrick Jamison and Ray Krone are just four among hundreds of people across the United States that have been found innocent while on death row. One exoneree believes his faith saved his life. Jamison was sentenced to life after a false accusation of murder. After years of his execution being placed on hold, a federal judge requested a new trial for Jamison. He was found innocent due to the prosecutor withholding key evidence from his trial.”