{"id":198728,"date":"2025-10-25T00:22:43","date_gmt":"2025-10-25T05:22:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/?p=198728"},"modified":"2025-10-25T00:23:19","modified_gmt":"2025-10-25T05:23:19","slug":"lawmakers-seek-to-end-death-penalty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/2025\/10\/25\/lawmakers-seek-to-end-death-penalty\/","title":{"rendered":"Lawmakers seek to end death penalty"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

VW independent staff\/submitted information<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the 44th anniversary of Ohio\u2019s death penalty law taking effect, 27 members of the 114th General Assembly have now joined an effort calling for legal executions to be abolished.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last week, the former lawmakers sent a letter to current lawmakers expressing support for efforts to repeal Ohio\u2019s death penalty. The letter is directed to the Senate Judiciary Committee, where Senate Bill 133 was referred.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hearings on the legislation have not yet begun. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The letter states, in part, \u201cwe understand this broken death penalty system\u2019s grievous flaws, its unintended consequences, and its failure to achieve the benefits we had intended.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

“When those responsible for our current capital punishment system say it must go, our state lawmakers must listen,\u201d said Sean McCann, Policy Strategist for the ACLU of Ohio. \u201cOhio\u2019s death penalty is administered arbitrarily and unfairly, fails to deter crime and puts innocent lives at risk. The ACLU of Ohio has advocated for abolition since 1981, and we could not agree more with these ‘architects’ that the system is broken beyond repair.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Marge Koosed, Professor Emerita at the University of Akron Law School, interviewed 44 of the 57 surviving former legislators. \u201cOnly five of them expressed continued support for the current death penalty system,\u201d Koosed said. \u201cThe rest now believe ending the death penalty is appropriate, and everyone I interviewed agrees it is not working as they expected.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ohio\u2019s death penalty was reinstated in 1981 on a 67-31 vote in the House, 23-10 in the Senate. Over half the members of the 114th General Assembly have passed away. Professor Koosed set out to learn whether the architect\u2019s views were shared by others who had voted on the issue in 1981. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI had reviewed the Columbus Dispatch<\/em> op-ed written by several architects: former Governor Bob Taft, and former Attorneys General Jim Petro and Lee Fisher\u201d, Koosed said. \u201cThey found the system they helped to create was so fundamentally flawed it must be rejected, and Paul Pfeifer, the principal architect of the 1981 legislation and later an Ohio Supreme Court Justice applying it, has repeatedly urged repeal.\u201c <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Former Ohio Supreme Court Justice Paul Pfeifer, in a law review article, wrote: \u201cAre we done with death in Ohio? We should be. The statute which we believed in 1981 was carefully crafted, limited in reach, and targeting just the “worst of the worst,” has fallen far short in so many ways. \u2026 Ohio’s death penalty statute has, in practice, resulted in a “death lottery” that should be abandoned.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

In 2011, Pfeifer said, \u201cSo I ask, do we want our state government\u2013and thus by extension, all of us \u2013 to be in the business of taking lives in what amounts to a death lottery? I can\u2019t imagine that\u2019s something about which most of us feel comfortable. And, thus, I believe the time has come to abolish the death penalty in Ohio.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kevin Werner, Executive Director of Ohioans to Stop Executions said, \u201cWe know so much more today than lawmakers knew 44 years ago. And now that we know better, we need to do better and repeal the death penalty.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Former Governor Bob Taft is not a signer on the Architects letter released today because he did not vote on the final bill as he had left the legislature for another position. Former Justice Paul Pfeifer is not a signer due to his current position as Executive Director of the Ohio Judicial Conference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since Governor Mike DeWine took office in 2019, there have been no executions in Ohio. DeWine blamed ongoing problems involving the willingness of pharmaceutical suppliers to provide drugs necessary for lethal injections to the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction. Other states have continued carrying out death sentences via lethal injection, while others have changed methods, including the use of a firing squad or nitrogen gas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost recently voiced support for a bill that would change Ohio\u2019s form of execution from lethal injection to nitrogen hypoxia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

VW independent staff\/submitted information On the 44th anniversary of Ohio\u2019s death penalty law taking effect, 27 members of the 114th General Assembly have now joined an effort calling for legal executions to be abolished. Last week, the former lawmakers sent a letter to current lawmakers expressing support for efforts to repeal Ohio\u2019s death penalty. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-198728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-03 02:03:45","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198728"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198728\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":198772,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198728\/revisions\/198772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}