‘From Noose to Needle’ program raises awareness of death penalty race disparities (February 28, 2022)
“Efforts to end capital punishment in Ohio were recently brought here, the site of the lynching to two black men by mobs in the late 1800s. The idea was comparing those two horrific deaths with the present-day numbers of the imbalance of executions of people of color to the white population.”
Click here to read the rest of this article in the Hamilton Journal-News.
Podcast: Columbus Perspective (February 27, 2022)
Click here to listen to an interview with OTSE’s executive director, Hannah Kubbins.
Death penalty conversation reaches Oxford (February 25, 2022)
“The Ohio State House’s fight over the death penalty legislature recently reached Oxford in a Noose to Needle rally held by Ohioans to Stop Executions (OTSE). It was set to take place with a panel over Zoom and a public gathering in Uptown Park on Thursday, Feb. 17.”
Click here to read the rest of this article in The Miami Student.
Group highlights the parallels between lynching and the modern death penalty (February 17, 2022)
“An anti-death penalty group in Ohio is arguing that lynchings in the 19th and early 20th centuries had a lot in common with the way the modern death penalty is applied. On Thursday it will highlight Ohio lynchings to make that case.”
Click here to read the rest of this article in the Ohio Capital Journal.
Op-Ed: The end of the road for Ohio’s death penalty (February 12, 2022)
“Growing up in the Ohio Valley in the 1990s it was common to take a weekend trip to the now-defunct West Virginia Penitentiary in Moundsville. Why? To see the now-decommissioned electric chair known as “Old Sparky.” I remember looking at the chair horrified by the story being told by my tour guide and the placards on the wall. I simply could not believe that the wooden chair I was viewing had taken the lives of nine people. It was surreal. I was a kid, and that’s probably the first time I really thought about our country’s use of capital punishment. Now, it’s something I think about every day.”
Click here to read the rest of this op-ed published in the Herald Star.
Bills seek to end the death penalty in Ohio – and have backing from some staunch conservatives (February 9, 2022)
“Ohio Rep. Jean Schmidt was once a supporter of the state’s death penalty. But she says she’s had a change of heart.
That change came in part after speaking with Joe D’Ambrosio, a man who sat on Ohio’s death row for 20 years for a murder he didn’t commit before he was exonerated in 2012.”
Click here to listen to the rest of this story on 91.7 WVXU (Cincinnati Edition).
Op-Ed: Risk of executing the innocent is too great (February 1, 2022)
“When the Ohio General Assembly voted to bring back the state’s death penalty in 1981, I firmly believe they did so with the best of intentions. Those lawmakers thought that our criminal justice system was unimpeachable and that the death penalty served the best interests of our citizens. I, too, used to believe that the death penalty was necessary for Ohio.
However, after learning how the death penalty really works in Ohio, I have changed my mind.”
Click here to read the rest of this op-ed from Rep. Jean Schmidt in The Cincinnati Enquirer.
Radio: The Jimmy Malone Show (January 28, 2022)
Our director of organizing, Jennifer Pryor, was featured on The Jimmy Malone Show. You can check our her segment via the link below starting around 1:11:00.
Letter to the Editor: Record of exonerations is one of many reasons to eliminate Ohio’s death penalty (January 21, 2022)
“I support repealing Ohio’s death penalty. It’s a costly system that wrongfully convicts people with alarming regularity, burns taxpayer money, harms murder victim family members, and does not serve as an appropriate response to violent crime.”
Click here to read the rest of this letter from Bruce Freeman published in the Akron Beacon Journal.
Op-Ed: My wrongful conviction shows why Ohio should abolish the death penalty: Joe D’Ambrosio (January 19, 2022)
“It has been ten years since my official exoneration from Ohio’s death row. On Jan. 23, 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court denied the Cuyahoga County prosecutor’s appeal against me. I was finally free.
I wish I could say that – in these ten years – the legal system has been fixed and that what happened to me will never happen again. But since my exoneration, five more people have been exonerated from Ohio’s death row, all from Cuyahoga County. Eleven people total have been wrongfully sentenced to death in our state.”
Click here to read the rest of this op-ed on cleveland.com here.