A Republican state lawmaker in Ohio is renewing calls to do away with the death penalty in her state.
Last year, state lawmakers introduced legislation on a bipartisan basis that would completely end capital punishment in Ohio. The bills have yet to make their way out of committee, though.
In 2020, Republican Governor Mike DeWine put an unofficial moratorium on death penalty executions in Ohio, as the state has been unable to obtain the necessary drugs to conduct lethal injections.
The governor has told lawmakers to find alternative methods, and has since delayed many executions.
Republican state Senator Michele Reynolds said recently that it’s time to continue moving forward with abolishing capital punishment in Ohio. Because she’s “pro-life,” she said she wants the death penalty to be abolished.
As she told local media outlet WBNS-10TV:
“Being pro-life is really about life period, all life.”
Those who are in favor of capital punishment say that it’s a good thing for the families of the victims in the case. Reynolds countered that the executions of people don’t necessarily bring the family members any closure.
As she said:
“There have been a lot of families who have spoken about the death penalty just saying that because of the appeals and them having to relive and not really getting justice.”
Dave Yost, the attorney general of Ohio, is in favor of the death penalty remaining. A spokesperson for his office said this week that he “deeply respects Senator Reynolds’ religious views on the issue.” The spokesperson then added:
“Unfortunately, the punishment is justified for the worst of the worst criminals, and Ohio needs to end the stalemate of this flawed capital-punishment system.”
In the 2023 Capital Crimes Report, which Yost’s office published, it says that 119 inmates are currently on death row in the state. The report also highlighted that the cost of actually executing all of those inmates could total anywhere from $121 million to $363 million.
Ohio isn’t the only state that has halted executions through the use of executive action. There are five others that have done so, the Death Penalty Information Center reports.
The last execution that took place in Ohio happened back in July of 2018.
There are 27 states, including Ohio, that still have capital punishment on the books, with 23 others having abolished it. There are many Midwestern states that have done away with capital punishment, including Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan and Illinois.
This is a point that Reynolds jumped on when she said:
“I just think at this point we can join other Midwestern states and move forward in this conversation, and I think it’s a conversation worth having.”
Executions have declined significantly in recent years, and public support for them has declined as well.
Still, there are some lawmakers in Ohio who are pushing for executions to start back up again.
There’s a bill circulating through the state House that would allow inmates on death row to choose whether they wanted to be executed by nitrogen hypoxia if the state couldn’t access drugs for lethal injections.
Alabama was the first state to use that method to execute an inmate, which happened earlier in the year. Critics of the method have called it experimental and cruel, since it essentially suffocates a person by not allowing them to breathe oxygen.
