Reasons in 2025 to Abolish the Death Penalty in Ohio
There are compelling moral and practical reasons for eliminating the death penalty in Ohio. Two major moral arguments against the death penalty are based upon a respect for life and a rejection of such an elective use of violence by the state. Numerous organizations, such as The Ohio Council of Churches, Catholic Conference of Ohio, ACLU of Ohio, Amnesty International, NAACP, League of Women Voters, and OTSE (Ohioans to Stop Executions), are thus actively working towards its abolition. Those in the Pro-Life movement as well should oppose the voluntary taking of a human life when there are viable alternatives available.
The Cleveland Plain Dealer published an editorial supporting the passage of a bill that would abolish the death penalty in Ohio, stating that the time is right “for the General Assembly to come together to end capital punishment in Ohio. Its inequities are manifest, its barbarism is clear -- and its time has passed.” A co-sponsor of Senate Bill 101 in 2024, Nickie Antonio (D-Lakewood), in testimony described the death penalty as “expensive, impractical, unjust, inhumane, and erroneous.” Additionally, a study from Amnesty International found that “far from making society safer, the death penalty has been shown to have a brutalizing effect on society. State-sanctioned killing only serves to endorse the use of force and continue the cycle of violence.”
Further reasons to abolish the death penalty are provided by data related to cost, deterrence, wrongful convictions, closure, and existing disparities in race, geography, and poverty. Eliminating the death penalty would help to clarify our own values. It would also help distinguish the Western liberal tradition, based on human rights, personal dignity, and our common humanity, from a building coalition of autocratic governments that wish to reshape the world order to accommodate their use of coercive power.
Policy Reasons to Abolish the Death Penalty
Cost
A death penalty case with all of its delays and appeals is far more expensive than the alternative of life in prison without parole. The Death Penalty Information Center reported that in Texas “a death penalty case costs an average of $2.3 million, about three times the cost of imprisoning someone in a single cell at the highest security level for 40 years.” Ohio’s own House Bill 136 (2020) cited national data showing that capital cases cost two-and-a-half to five times more than non-capital cases. Since Ohio reinstated the death penalty in 1981, there have been 3,365 capital indictments, but only 340 death sentences and 56 executions. A report from Ohioans to Stop Executions in 2020 concluded that “These numbers reveal a fiscally wasteful and indefensible system -- a system that presently fails to achieve its goal 98.4% of the time is not worth keeping and certainly is not worth the massive investment Ohioans have made in it.”
Deterrence
There is no evidence showing that the death penalty is a better deterrent than life imprisonment without parole. In “The Case Against the Death Penalty” (2012), the ACLU stated that in the last decade that “the murder rate in states with capital punishment was 25-46% higher than in states without the death penalty.” A National Academy of Sciences report in 2012 evaluated all the deterrence studies and found no evidence the death penalty was a better deterrent than the alternative sentence of life without parole. Life imprisonment without parole is a reasonable and cost-effective alternative for keeping our communities safe.
Only 18 prisoners were executed in six states in the United States in 2022. Currently, 23 states have abolished the death penalty, and an additional 10 states have not had an execution in 10 years. In addition, governors in California, Oregon, and Pennsylvania have put moratoriums on executions. On December 23, 2024, President Biden commuted the death sentences of 37 men out of 40 on the federal death row. The other three were convicted of domestic or foreign terrorism. Even in those states that have abolished the death penalty, federal laws related to capital punishment can be enforced.
Ohio itself has halted executions since 2019 due to concerns about lethal injections. In 2024, Ohio prosecutors initiated only one new death penalty case the entire year. Abolishing the death penalty in Ohio would likely be a tipping point toward achieving a national abolition of the death penalty.
Wrongful Convictions
The irreversible nature of executions makes it imperative to consider the prevalence of wrongful convictions. In Ohio alone, since 1976, eleven individuals have been exonerated from death row. That means that for every five executions in Ohio, one individual on death row has been found innocent and exonerated. These individuals served an average of 21 years in prison before their release. Nationally there have been 200 exonerations from death row since 1972. That is, for about every eight executions, one individual on death row has been exonerated. A large number of these exonerations were the result of police corruption such as forced confessions or official misconduct by prosecutors. These numbers alone are enough to reconsider the use of the death penalty.
Closure
The average prisoner awaiting execution in Ohio in 2024 had spent 22 years on death row. Terry Collins, who was a warden and former head of the Division of Rehabilitation and Corrections in Ohio, wrote that from his experience, “it is emotionally traumatic for the families of victims to be recalled into courts year after year because of so many death penalty appeals. I observed firsthand the emotions of the victims’ families. An increasing number of families ask the state not to pursue the death penalty so that they are not faced with the painful task of attending appeals hearings, and so they can achieve closure.”
Also, participation in the conviction and execution of a person in a death penalty case can be a source of significant stress and conflict for lawyers, prosecutors, governors, judges, juries and those responsible for carrying out the execution.
Severe Disparities and Arbitrary Applications of the Death Penalty
Even within the state of Ohio there is no equity in how the death penalty is applied. Due to the enormous costs of prosecuting a capital punishment case, the smaller counties with less financial resources have plea bargained these cases to a lesser offense. Even in the larger counties there has been no conformity and these cases are at the arbitrary discretion of the prosecutor. Also, in 2005, the legislature in Ohio passed a law which allowed prosecutors to offer an option of a penalty of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole rather than the death penalty. Since then, . the number of death sentences have dropped precipitously. There still remain prisoners on death row, however, who were convicted before that option was available. Similar types of murder cases in our state have simply not been treated equally or in the same way when considering either geographical place or time.
Abolishing the death penalty would also address some of the social tensions regarding the justice system. Nationally, there has been a historical legacy of slavery, vigilante lynchings and a bias in capital punishment based on race and poverty. There also remain some disparities in capital punishment related to race and poverty. The vast majority of executions in recent years have also involved individuals with significant vulnerabilities, such as serious mental illness, developmental impairments, and/or chronic serious childhood trauma, neglect, or abuse. At the time Illinois abolished the death penalty, Governor Quinn wrote, “I have concluded that our system of imposing the death penalty is inherently flawed. The evidence presented to me by former prosecutors and judges with decades of experience in the criminal justice system has convinced me that it is impossible to devise a system that is consistent, that is free from discrimination on the basis of race, geography or economic circumstances, and that always gets it right.”
The Importance of Values and Human Rights
Another major reason to abolish the death penalty is the role of values in foreign policy. 144 countries (more than 70%) have either abolished the death penalty in law or in practice. Most consider it a violation of human rights. A country cannot belong to the European Union if it has capital punishment. Since 2008, the United States has been the only country in the Americas to carry out executions. The United States not only remains an outlier, but also it has been amongst those countries that most frequently use the death penalty along with China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt. This is the company that we keep and for which we inadvertently provide some cover for their abuses. Abolishing the death penalty, on the other hand, would be a powerful foreign policy act. It would help to clarify that Russia, China, Iran and North Korea have nothing in common except the use of coercion to stay in power.
Conclusion
Ohio has numerous compelling reasons to abolish the death penalty. There are moral arguments based on a respect for life, human dignity and our common humanity. There is also opposition to elective violence sanctioned by the state when there is a viable alternative of life imprisonment without parole. Practical considerations such as cost-effectiveness, the lack of deterrence, potential wrongful convictions, the need for closure, and disparities on the basis of race, geography, and/or economic circumstances reinforce the case against the death penalty. Abolishing the death penalty in Ohio would also be a tipping point and contribute to a broader movement towards national abolition. This shift would align the United States more closely with the principles of human rights, individual personal dignity, and our common humanity as described in the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights.. These universal values of the Western liberal tradition distinguish us in both domestic and foreign affairs from a building coalition of autocratic governments that want to change the world order to accommodate their use of coercion to stay in power. These universal moral values are perhaps the one thing that is most to our advantage in foreign affairs.