Time is running out for Gov. DeWine to take a side on the death penalty

Ohio is one of America’s most important death penalty “swing states.” Although the ultimate punishment is legal there, no one has been executed in the state since 2018, when Robert Van Hook was put to death.    

Soon after he took office in 2019, Gov. Mike DeWine imposed a kind of informal moratorium on executions in the Buckeye State. But Ohio’s thoughtful and respected chief executive has yet to say what he thinks about whether the state should abolish capital punishment, or whether he will commute the sentences of the 113 people on Ohio’s death row before he leaves office next January.

Ohio has the sixth-most-populated death row in the country. And that is why Dewine’s decision will be so important. 

The recent release of two reports — one from Ohioans to Stop Executions, the other from the state’s pro-death penalty attorney general, Dave Yost — has teed up the debate. Ohio citizens would benefit greatly from the governor’s leadership, and his views would play an important role in the wider national conversation.    

In December 2024, DeWine told a group of reporters who cover the statehouse, “We’ve not had any executions since I’ve been governor. We will not as long as I’m governor.” During his time in office, he has issued more than 40 reprieves. In January, he added three more to the list, pushing back executions to 2029.

In his 2024 press conference, Dewine went on to promise that “In the next few months, I’ll have more to say about it.” Last December, he renewed that pledge. The people of Ohio are still waiting.  

Meanwhile, certain facts about the state’s death penalty are inescapable. Race plays a big role in death sentencing in Ohio. Whereas 13 percent of the state’s population is Black, Black people comprise 55 percent of Ohio’s death row. In addition, according to the state’s ACLU chapter, the death penalty is very costly, averaging an additional $1 million to $3 million spent per case. The ACLU points to the risk of executing the innocent as another reason for Ohio to abolish capital punishment.  

Those facts should be enough to propel DeWine to announce his opposition to the death penalty and empty Ohio’s death row.

The March 30 report from Ohioans to Stop Execution highlights the death penalty’s unreliability. “Since Ohio reinstituted the death penalty in 1981,” it observes, “the state has executed 56 individuals. In the same period, another 12 individuals were exonerated from Ohio’s death row. Said another way, for every five people that Ohio executes, one is exonerated.” 

Those figures, the report argues, have led most of the state’s prosecutors to stop bringing capital cases. Ohioans to Stop Executions points out a similarly stark drop in the number of death sentences handed down by juries in capital cases, which they say shows “the extent of Ohioans’ distrust in the death penalty system.” 

Yost is not persuaded. His annual “Capital Crimes Report” maintains that the “few cases of actual innocence date back to antiquated versions of our system. … Miscarriages of justice — none of which has resulted in the execution of an innocent person in Ohio — have no bearing on the present state of our system.” 

That is hard to square with the fact that, just last year, Connie Pillich, a county prosecutor, dismissed a case against one Elwood Jones “for a mur­der he did not com­mit.”

But as Yost sees it, “Those on Death Row have had more than their fair share of due process — and second and third helpings of overdue process.” He characterizes Ohio’s death penalty system this way: “It is protecting against mistakes. It is not doing justice.”  

So there you have it. Two very different views of what is going on in a crucial death penalty swing state.

As DeWine considers what to do, death penalty supporters and opponents in the Ohio legislature have introduced their own proposals — one to abolish the death penalty, another to add nitrogen hypoxia to the state’s execution methods.

DeWine has to choose sides. In this endeavor, he might take counsel from one of his distinguished predecessors, Gov. Michael DiSalle (D).

DiSalle, who served from 1959 to 1963, was a lifelong opponent of capital punishment. He nonetheless presided over six executions during his term. On each of the nights when they occurred, DiSalle “felt that I owed the whole human race an apology for being faithful to my oath of office at the expense of my deepest personal beliefs.”

Talking about the death penalty, DiSalle said that “playing God in that way has no conceivable moral or scientific justification.”

Deciding on life and death issues should never be easy, and I respect Mike DeWine for his judicious deliberation. But Disalle has lit the path for him, and for the rest of us.  

Austin Sarat is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College.

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