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To most casual observers, it may appear as if the death penalty is dead. After all, in 2023, only five states carried out 24 executions of capital criminals in the United States. In Ohio, not one has taken place in nearly six years.
But not all is as it appears. On the books, capital punishment lives on in 27 states and in all 50 states for federal crimes. The ongoing nationwide lull results from what Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost calls "a private-sector pardon" as pharmaceutical companies refuse to sell the necessary drugs to carry out the death penalty by lethal injection.
As a result, capital punishment in Ohio and elsewhere remains a farce. As Yost so aptly put it, the death penalty is "a broken promise of justice, and it must be fixed."
Now at long last, a fix is in the works.
Enter state Reps. Brian Stewart, R-Ashville, and Phil Plummer, R-Dayton, who this year introduced House Bill 392. That bill would add nitrogen hypoxia asphyxiation to the legal methods by which a death sentence may be carried out. It also could end the state of limbo for capital punishment in the state of Ohio.
Fortunately, the bill already has gained traction. The House Government Oversight Committee began hearings on it this spring. At one hearing last month, revered Trumbull County Prosecutor Dennis Watkins gave compelling testimony for Ohio's stalled capital punishment system to resume. He argued, as he has boldly argued throughout his 40 years as the county's top legal officer, for the state to finally obey the well-reasoned orders of juries and judges to fulfill death sentences as expeditiously as possible.
That clearly has not been the case in Ohio for far too long. Since the death penalty was reinstated in the Buckeye State in 1981, only 56 of 341 death sentences have been administered.
HB 392 has potential to clear that logjam and end the state's institutional miscarriage of justice.
Of course, some opponents, including the American Civil Liberties Union, argue the use of nitrogen gas to execute capital criminals constitutes "cruel and unusual punishment." Truth to tell, however, no method of execution-- including the decidedly more painful electrocution or firing squad -- has been found in violatino per se of the Eighth Amendment. As for nitrogen gas, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to consider an appeal from Kennth Smith of Alabama on its legitimacy as an execution tool. Smith then became the first person in the U.S. to be executed by inhaling it earlier this year.
But beyond the legal mandate to carry out a just sentence lies other reasons to end the death penalty moratorium.
For one, a majority of Americans, according to a fall 2023 Gallup poll, support the death penalty. Many see it as a deterrent to crime and as a just punishment for the incredibly brutal murders many of them committed.
Second, the death penalty stands as more fiscally responsible. A state estimate shows death sentences have cost Ohio taxpayers $384 million, mostly in legal fees, a figure estimated to be five times higher than the cost of housing a convicted killer for life.
Lastly, but perhaps most importantly, carrying a capital crime case to its natural conclusion inside a death chamber provides much needed closure for families and friends of victims. Consider Miriam Fife, mother of 12-year-old Raymond Fife, who was raped, tortured and murdered 39 years ago in Warren by convicted killer Danny Lee Hill. Thirty-nine years and about 30 unsuccessful appeals later, Hill remains alive and Mrs. Fife and her son's loved ones remain anguished and revictimized.
As Watkins put it in his support for HB 392, "Miriam Fife should not be -- at age 83 -- twisting in the wind waiting for us to do our job."
Passage of HB 392 could clear the path to end that wait and carry out the appropriate and long-delayed justice for the worst of the worst in our state. We call on state legislators to do so promptly before summer recess.