Ohio death penalty may be reintroduced at Statehouse
COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) -- President Donald Trump wants to “restore the death penalty” through an executive order he signed earlier this week.
“The death penalty is not effective,” Executive Director of Death Penalty Action Abraham Bonowitz said. “That's the thing.”
“It should be rare, but it should be preserved, and it should be available,” Ohio Rep. Brian Stewart (R-Ashville) said.
Whether the death penalty should be eliminated has been the topic of debate for more than a decade at the Ohio Statehouse and Ohio Senate Minority Leader Nickie Antonio (D-Lakewood) has been behind the effort to abolish it for several years.
Now in play is also an effort to authorize the use of nitrogen hypoxia for executions in Ohio, an effort being championed by Stewart.
“I think that the death penalty should be an available sentence for the most heinous murders amongst us,” he said. “I think President Trump’s executive order acknowledges that. People understand, inmates understand, that capital punishment is the most severe punishment that we have.”
“It's morally reprehensible,” Antonio said. “We should have advanced as a society to believe and be better than the worst criminals that we have sitting on death row right now.”
There are currently three people on federal death row. As far as states go, there are nine that executed prisoners last year, three holding their first executions in more than a decade. Twenty-three states do not allow the death penalty, and states like Ohio have it, but have not carried out an execution in years.
“It boils down to fewer than 1% of the people who are death eligible, who could be executed actually getting that death sentence and staying on death row to the point of either dying there or being executed,” Bonowitz said.
Antonio said while she plans to reintroduce her bill to abolish the death penalty, and is working to find a middle ground, she is worried that the executive order from Trump may change the dialogue a bit.
“Certainly, it's concerning,” she said. “At the same time, I believe the majority of people in Ohio and in the country have flipped how they feel about the death penalty. The reality is that the manufacturers of those medications were created to save lives, not to execute people. The majority of the manufacturers have denied use of their drugs for executions.”
Antonio said she has been working on this issue for many reasons, but there is one that stands out to her most.
“Part of the reason why I've worked so hard to try to end the death penalty, a whole host of reasons,” Antonio said. “At the top of the list is we get it wrong. There are people on death row right now who may or may not be guilty of the crime that they were committed, convicted of. If there's one person whose innocent on death row, we should all be concerned about that.”
On the other side, Stewart said capital punishment is a good deterrent, and in some cases is the best justice.
“It should be rare, but it should be available. I don’t think anybody really buys that life without parole is the same as capital punishment,” he said. “If that were the case, you would see people who have life without the possibility of parole lining up to say, ‘No, no. I would prefer to be executed instead.’ You never see that.”
“We believe that the ultimate punishment should be throwing away the key, which is death by incarceration,” Bonowitz said. “Life without parole is a misnomer because it's no life. You want to order a pizza? Walk barefoot on grass? Make love to your partner? Forget it. That's never going to happen again."
Both Antonio and Stewart plan to reintroduce their bills. Stewart said he thinks leadership will be more receptive to his legislation this general assembly.
“We believe the bill has a good chance to pass,” Stewart said. “We have more time in this general assembly. I think that leadership is more friendly to the bill that we’ve had in the two years past and so we are going to bring the debate back again and see where the caucus stands.”
Antonio said she will have something for lawmakers to consider these next two years too.
“I will be reintroducing something,” she said. “We're trying to figure out if there's, if there's a way forward where there's agreements on both sides of the aisle for something this time. I'm not quite sure if we'll be able to do that or not but I will definitely be introducing an end again to the death penalty as I have before.”
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine has not authorized a single execution during his time as governor. Ohio has more than 100 inmates on death row, but DeWine cites a difficulty getting the appropriate drugs as his reason for halting executions. He did not have any new comment on the topic on Thursday.