Ohio has not gone through with an execution since July 2018, closing in on eight years, and extending the entirety of Gov. Mike DeWine’s tenure. DeWine has postponed every one since January 2019, with some of those sentenced to death getting more than one reprieve.
In his last year as governor, the longtime Republican elected official is hinting at coming out against the death penalty in practice.
If he does, it won’t be an easy sell among lawmakers, at least in the Ohio House.
A slow-growing contingent of Republican lawmakers are for abolishing executions, but House Speaker Matt Huffman (R-Lima) said he believes it’s not the majority.
“If it got to the point where an overwhelming number of my caucus said, ‘We want to do that,’ no, I’m not going to block that from coming to the floor,” Huffman told reporters Wednesday. “I just don’t think that’s going to happen.”
And Huffman wants to fight abolition legislation “vigorously,” he said.
In January 2002, during a drug-related robbery in Huffman’s hometown of Lima, Cleveland Jackson and Jeronique Cunningham shot and killed a 3-year-old and a 17-year-old, wounding several others. Both men sit on Ohio’s death row.
“It was a horrific scene,” Huffman told reporters. “It was on Eureka Street ... and well known to folks in Lima. Recently, Gov. DeWine commuted his execution, I think, for the fifth time. We’ve all heard the phrase justice delayed is justice denied, but that individual should be executed.”
House Minority Leader Rep. Dani Isaacsohn (D-Cincinnati) told reporters the Democratic caucus has not had major conversations around current proposals.
“I oppose the death penalty,” Isaacsohn told reporters Wednesday. “I don’t think the government should be in the business of killing people.”
Among the many arguments for and against executions, abolition advocates say innocent Ohioans could be executed, pointing to powerful stories from death row exonerees. Opponents often say it’s a crime deterrent reserved for “the worst of the worst.”
A total of 109 men and one woman are incarcerated on death row in Ohio, according to Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections data.
