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The pendulum on the hypercontentious death penalty in Ohio shows promising signs toward swinging clearly in the direction of growing popular support for its application.
Consider:
• A July 2026 Pew Poll of 3,354 Americans found 68% of respondents view the death penalty as morally justified for those committing murder while only 28% viewed it as wrong, reversing a decadeslong general trend of majority support for its abolition.
• The pace of executions across America is accelerating. The U.S. carried out 47 death-penalty sentences in 2025, nearly doubling the 25 executions from 2024. Earlier this month, three executions took place on the same day for the first time in 16 1/2 years.
• Support for applying the death penalty for rapists of children is gaining steam with a string of new state laws permitting it. A recent informal unscientific poll by this newspaper found a whopping 82% of local respondents supporting that move.
Capitalizing on those trends in the Mahoning Valley and the Buckeye State is distinguished Trumbull County Prosecutor Dennis Watkins.
For decades, he has tirelessly championed the need to apply capital punishment on the worst-of-the-worst murderers and rapists in our midst. He has upped his activism this month by urging the Republican majority in the Ohio General Assembly to join other states by enacting laws to allow juries to consider the death penalty in predatory criminal sexual assaults of young children -- even if the rapes do not result in the deaths of the victims.
Clearly, achieving those goals will not be easy, but it's a battle worth fighting in the name of securing long-deferred justice for the families of countless suffering victims, such as 86-year-old Miriam Fife of Warren. Her 12-year-old son Raymond was raped, tortured and murdered 41 years ago while his rapist and killer remains alive thanks to scores of bogus appeals and this state's misguided moratorium on executions.
We urge others to join Watkins' two-pronged fight to restore application of the death penalty in this state and to extend its potential use to those demons who brazenly and mercilessly sexually assault young children and inflict irreversible lifelong damage on them.
Part of that double-edged fight will be waged at polling places throughout the state this fall. Those who agree that the moratorium on death penalty application must cease -- and cease expeditiously -- must take great care in their selections for state governor, attorney general and state legislators.
In the close race for governor, Republican Vivek Ramaswamy has declared his support for the death penalty for the most egregious criminal offenders but has called for a measured approach in ending the moratorium. His Democrat challenger, Amy Acton, however, has said she would respect the ongoing moratorium while developing a bipartisan path forward based on input from a wide cross-section of residents.
In the race for attorney general, the top legal officer in the state, Republican candidate Keith Faber opposes Gov. Mike DeWine's appeal for abolition, and said if elected he would work to identify constitutional methods of execution that can be implemented immediately. His Democrat challenger John Kulewicz has essentially sidestepped the controversy, saying he would enforce and uphold existing state laws without articulating any personal moral policies on capital punishment.
As for making child rape a capital crime subject to a possible death penalty, more profound challenges rise. A June 2026 Gongwer-Werth Legislative Poll found a slight majority (56%) of Ohio House and Senate members would vote to repeal the death penalty. That, of course, would negate any chance of expanding the contours of the statute.
The biggest hurdle, however, rests with the highest court of the land. The U.S. Supreme Court in 2008 ruled in a narrow 5-4 decision that the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution bars the death penalty for the rape of a child where the crime did not result in death of the victim.
But promising challenges to that ruling already are mounting. Seven states have enacted laws to make child rape or severe sexual battery eligible for the death penalty, and about a half dozen others are considering similar measures.
We urge lawmakers from the Valley or anywhere in Ohio to muster up the will to introduce similar bold legislation so Ohio can add fuel to the fire of opposition to the misguided federal precedent.
On the federal level, U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., this year introduced the Death Penalty for Child Rapists Act, modeled after the new state statutes. U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, owes it to seekers of justice everywhere to extricate that bill from the lethargy it has languished in for six months in the House Judiciary Committee that he chairs.
Clearly, however, momentum is building toward properly punishing the most egregious, depraved and irredeemable murderers and child rapists in our state and nation. In Ohio, state legislators should seize the moment, respect growing support for capital punishment, and end the senseless eight-year moratorium, which former Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost most accurately labeled "a mockery of the justice system and of the dead and their families."