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Photos by Graham Lienhart
Carol Parcell of Akron isn't a private investigator or a lawyer. But she found new evidence in the case of a Death Row inmate, and she found it in what most would consider an unlikely place — the prosecutor's file.
"They said I couldn't do it, but I did it on my own," Parcell says. "I contacted the prosecutor's office, and I just went in and said I wanted to see Brett's file and I wanted a copy of it. It cost me $300 or $400. They just marked out the social security numbers of anybody, and this is where we found all the lies by the police and other things."
Her only qualification is the same thing that motivates her — love for her son.
"It took me five years before I could even talk about Brett's situation," Parcell says. "I'm not ashamed of my son. He never committed this crime."
Photos by Graham Lienhart
Carol Parcell of Akron isn't a private investigator or a lawyer. But she found new evidence in the case of a Death Row inmate, and she found it in what most would consider an unlikely place — the prosecutor's file.
"They said I couldn't do it, but I did it on my own," Parcell says. "I contacted the prosecutor's office, and I just went in and said I wanted to see Brett's file and I wanted a copy of it. ... It cost me $300 or $400. They just marked out the social security numbers of anybody, and this is where we found all the lies by the police and other things."
Her only qualification is the same thing that motivates her — love for her son.
"It took me five years before I could even talk about Brett's situation," Parcell says. "I'm not ashamed of my son. He never committed this crime."
Like many Ohioans, Parcell never thought about the death penalty before her son, Brett Hartmann, was charged with the murder of a friend in 1997.
People on Death Row have a lot of time for introspection, Parcell says. She's watched her son mature into "a good person" and gets angry when people dismiss him as "a throwaway person."
"The hardest thing I've ever heard is the first week my son landed on Death Row, and I don't know if I can say it," Parcell says, hiccupping though tears. "He said, 'Mom, this is the end. I've had a really great life.' And he was just 23."
Parcell describes herself as a quiet person with few friends, but she's moved into the role of speaking out against the death penalty.
"I had a person say to me, 'You're just really normal looking,' " she says. "People have such a misconception of the families of inmates on Death Row."
Similarly, people make assumptions about the families of murder victims.
"Many people assume that family members of murder victims support the death penalty, but it's not the case," says David Elliott, communications director of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty (NCADP). "We have a number of affiliates, including Murder Victims' Families for Human Rights and Murder Victims' Families for Reconciliation. Their point is the death penalty actually serves as a barrier to healing. You go through this roller coaster appeals process that's absolutely topsy-turvy. Then eight, 10, 12 years later, by the time in some cases you finally reach the point of execution, it all of a sudden becomes all about the inmate. Oftentimes the people can't even remember the names of the victims."
A recent poll indicates 65 percent of Americans favor the death penalty and 51 percent think it isn't imposed enough. Sixty percent believe it's applied fairly, even though 63 percent believe innocent people have mistakenly been put to death.
In fact, since 1973, 123 Death Row inmates have been exonerated as a result of DNA testing, new evidence or retrials, according to the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC www.deathpenaltyinfo.org).
The latest challenge to Ohio's death penalty ironically centers on whether poisoning prisoners — or lethal injection, as it's more commonly known — is cruel and unusual punishment. Lethal injection came into use because of concerns about the propriety of the electric chair.
But even if the state comes up with a painless way to kill people, capital punishment is full of procedural problems on each step along the way to execution.
The brutalization of society
Faceless groups aren't as easy to relate to as a neighbor or friend who's lost a family member to murder. That's why many families in Ohio are speaking up to make their stories known.
"My nephew's ex-wife was murdered by her second husband, (against whom) she had a restraining order," says Sister Ruth Kuhn. "My nephew and Teri had three children. The oldest was not home, but the two younger ones were. He somehow got into the home, came to the bedroom and actually slit her throat. Her daughter was ill — she was about 7 or 8 years old — and was in bed with her mother. Her son didn't see it happen, but he did see his stepfather walk down the hall with the knife in his hand with the blood dripping off it."
The family, who lived in Montgomery County in 1998, gathered many times to discuss how to handle the situation.
"We did not want the children to have to go through a trial, to have to talk about their mother's death in front of strangers," Kuhn says. "By us saying that we did not want the children to testify at a trial, we eliminated the trial. In eliminating the trial, we eliminated the death penalty."
A Roman Catholic nun, Kuhn says she was hurt and angry but couldn't separate her beliefs from the tragedy.
"I start from the perspective that every human life is sacred," she says. "We cannot take the life of another human being. Only God can do that. I have seen the effect that losing their mother has had on these children, but I'm a firm believer that it's not our place to take the life of another person.
"This morning I heard on the news that a woman's estranged husband got in and stabbed her to death over in Blue Ash, and I thought, 'Isn't that interesting? I'm going to be talking about Teri this morning, and this many years later it's still happening.' The death penalty doesn't deter these kinds of crimes."
The concept of equality and the value of human life break down when the state says it's acceptable to kill some people. Saying some killing is wrong (murder) and some killing is acceptable (punishment) ultimately devalues all life and results in what scientists have dubbed the "brutalization effect."
Studies have proven that brutalization results when a state sanctions killing in the name of the people, according to DPIC publication Understanding Capital Punishment: A Guide Through the Debate.
"The theory behind brutalization is that, by having the death penalty, society devalues the worth of human life and legitimizes killing for those who are deemed to 'deserve it,' " the publication states. "A killer is not deterred because he does not identify with the person being executed; rather, the killer identifies with the executioner who can kill without reproach."
The proof is in the statistics. Thirteen states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico don't have the death penalty, and all but one have lower murder rates than states with the death penalty. Countries where the death penalty has been abolished also have lower murder rates: The U.S. murder rate is eight times higher than England's and seven times higher than France's.
Brutalization also undermines the foundation of religious beliefs about the value of life. NCADP and other abolitionist groups work with churches to educate people about capital punishment.
"Almost every single religious denomination in the United States has come out against the death penalty," Elliott says. "The exceptions that I can think of would be the Southern Baptist Convention and the Mormons. Even the United Methodist Church has come out of against the death penalty.
"In Ohio there are a lot of Catholics, and we work with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. They haven't come out against it absolutely, but they've come out with a strong statement that says that countries can only use the death penalty if it's the only way they have to protect themselves. Since countries can incarcerate people for lengthy periods of time, if not forever, then the Catholic bishops have said that it's time to effectively end the use of the death penalty."
The death penalty further defies religious and social precepts by sanctioning the value of one race over another, according to Elliott.
"Our criminal justice system sends a message in the way it implements the death penalty," he says. "Somehow the lives of white people are worth more than the lives of black people. Is anyone paying attention to that? Black people are."
That disparity becomes apparent when looking at the numbers. Of the people on Death Row for interracial murders in the United States since 1976, the number of white defendants with black victims is 12. The number of black defendants with white victims is 213.
'Closer to death'
Unequal application of the death penalty is why the U.S. Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional in 1976, effectively placing a moratorium on executions. The ruling demanded a degree of consistency in the application of the death penalty. Justice Potter Stewart wrote for the majority, saying death sentences were cruel and unusual punishment.
"These death sentences are cruel and unusual in the same way that being struck by lightning is cruel and unusual," he wrote. "I simply conclude that the Eighth and Fourteenth amendments cannot tolerate the infliction of a sentence of death under legal systems that permit this unique penalty to be so wantonly and so freakishly imposed."
Elliott says it looked like the death knell for the death penalty.
"When the U.S. Supreme Court struck down existing death penalty statutes in (1976), they weren't striking down the death penalty per se," he says. "They were striking it down as it was carried out at that time in the United States. Nonetheless, so many people thought that was the end of the death penalty. If you go back and look at the memoirs of former U.S. Supreme Court justices, they were surprised when state legislatures, some of them rushing back in emergency session, adopted new death penalty statutes."
The result was the creation of a "super form" of due process to ensure fairness. Bill Gallagher, a Cincinnati attorney who supports abolition, says the public and lawmakers are growing dissatisfied with the cost and time such a system requires. The result is a systematic erosion of the safeguards.
"I listen to what they're trying to do in Congress now to try to speed it up more, streamline it more," he says. "That's not the contract we entered into 30 years ago. We allowed the death penalty to be reinstated when the legislators and everyone said, 'Look it, if you're going to get the death penalty process back, you're going to have to create a super form of due process. You have to afford greater access to lawyers and courts to get the reinstatement of the death penalty.'
"Now to turn around to say, 'We don't like the cost, we don't like the delays, we don't like the number of courts these men and women have access to,' is hypocritical. If you wanted it, you have to afford it. You can't renege on that now."
Yet it appears the citizens and legislators of the state of Ohio are doing just that.
"The voters in the state of Ohio, in their infinite wisdom and compassion, voted to eliminate the intermediate appeal," says Jay Clark, a local attorney and teacher at the University of Cincinnati. "The argument is that they all ended up in the Ohio Supreme Court anyway, so all we did was eliminate an 'unnecessary step.' It eliminated one possible level of review to expedite the death penalty. It's another year or year and a half closer to their death."
Clark believes that move was self-serving and dangerous because the design of the death penalty system means it can't be fairly applied. It means less time to correct mistakes when they happen, and they've been proven to happen.
"There's no perfect world, and that is what you'd have to have in order to make the application of the death penalty fair," he says. "There's no uniform way to apply the death penalty. There's always going to be issues of gender, race and other things. We're human. We can't ignore those things.
"The system is too flawed. Fuck! This just isn't right when you apply that to the potential consequence of death. If you talk to anyone who doesn't have bloodlust, revenge or politics as a motive, I don't know how they can say it's fair."
The most frequent errors found in death penalty cases are erroneous eyewitness testimony or the inaccurate testimony of jailhouse informants; less common are police and prosecutorial misconduct. That's what the now-limited state appeals are supposed to remedy.
State courts hear the first round of appeals after a person is convicted and entertain new evidence. Federal courts decide only on alleged constitutional violations by the state courts.
That's what Parcell is dealing with now in her son's case.
"We found new evidence, but when you're going into the federal court they say, 'We don't take new evidence. That's supposed to be done in the state court,' " she says. "Well, because of a missing of one deadline, we were shut out of the state court. Brett has new lawyers now, so we're trying to get back in."
While many will argue that the system works because those mistakes are found, as evidenced by the number of exonerations, the problem is that people outside the legal system — family members, abolition groups and reporters — are frequently the people who dig up the evidence. That's because there's no incentive or money for the criminal justice system to examine the guilt of the convicted — they have their verdict. Taxpayers don't want to spend money on the "guilty."
It's the money
Another way in which Hamilton County saves money is to spend very little on public defenders, the attorneys most frequently used in capital cases. While Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters believes public defenders "do surprisingly well considering the pressures they're under," the Hamilton County Public Defenders Office is undergoing reforms to ensure adequate representation in response to an administrative complaint, seeking to de-fund the office, filed by attorney Bob Newman with the Ohio Public Defenders Office. A big reason is money spent on defense.
Both prosecutors and public defenders are paid from the same pool of money — taxpayer dollars. Yet they aren't equally funded and don't have access to identical resources.
The hourly rate for a public defender is $45 an hour, with a cap of $22,500 per case. Balance that against a county prosecutor with a ready staff of lawyers, investigators and other support personnel.
"The O.J. Simpson case showed what can happen when a person has the resources to level the playing field," Clark says. "It's making the state prove their case. The pro-prosecution (people) say, 'He bought his freedom.' No he didn't. He evened the playing field for his defense.
"If you go into any attorney's office and say, 'I'll pay you $45 an hour for a DUI charge,' nobody will take it."
In order to get the money needed to prepare a case, public defenders must go before a judge to ask for tests, such as DNA or blood analysis, and other resources. The ability to bring in high-caliber experts to put on a more aggressive defense doesn't get much support from the judge who approves the bills.
"Economics being what they are, judges are less inclined to give defense attorneys all the resources necessary when representing a poor person," Gallagher says. "There's a lot of pressure to try and use other people in Hamilton County versus going out and finding people whose lives are truly dedicated to doing this type of work. When lawyers come up and say, 'I want to see this specialist,' there's a lot of pressure saying, 'Why don't you just use one of our doctors at the court clinic? Why don't you just use one of the regular investigators? Why don't you just use this guy?' "
Deters dismisses what he calls the hypothetical claim that defense attorneys don't have what they need to try the case.
"I have never heard of a defendant who requested a test or an investigator, etc., that was denied by the court," Deters says. "No one wants to retry these cases, especially the judges, so they tend to bend over backwards to give them what they want."
Gallagher quickly points out that a lot of good lawyers serve as public defenders but also notes they're forced to donate time and resources to do an adequate job because their office overhead rate is typically $65 an hour — $20 more per hour than they'll earn.
Money is also a problem for prosecutors in smaller counties.
"There are counties where, if you kill somebody, you're not going to face the death penalty just for financial reasons," Gallagher says. "I'm sort of happy for that. At the same time, that calls into question the fairness of what's going on around the state."
Vinton County Common Pleas Judge Jeffrey L. Simmons made national headlines in 2002 when he removed the death penalty specification because "the potential impact of financial considerations could compromise the defendant's due process rights in a capital murder trial."
His concern was for taxpayers of Vinton County (in southeast Ohio) and the impact of using an estimated $2.7 million from the general fund for a single murder case.
Legal gamesmanship
There are professional standards for representing someone faced with a criminal charge. The National Legal Aid and Defender Association (www.nlada.org), among others, make these available.
Yet Ohio doesn't use them. Standards for prosecutorial conduct aren't delineated or enforced by the state either.
"Prosecutorial misconduct — now you're talking," says Jeff Gamso, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio. "Hamilton County and Cuyahoga County (Cleveland) lead the pack there. God knows they lead the pack for sheer number of cases of prosecutorial misconduct, whether they're going to do anything about it or not."
Something else Ohio doesn't require is the kind of information sharing between the defense and the prosecution that goes on in other kinds of trials. That would greatly reduce the likelihood of prosecutors hiding or misplacing critical information, according to Clark.
"If I run into the back end of your car, you can sue me," he says. "You can go out and get depositions from the 10 witnesses standing on the corner who saw it. If there's an expert witness, you have all this stuff pre-trial. In a death penalty case, you don't get the witness statements until after they testify. There's a stronger emphasis on getting the conviction than having a fair trial."
Currently being reviewed by a federal judge is a petition from Jeffrey A. Wogenstahl. In his case, First District Appeals Judge Mark Painter considered "serious" allegations that Deters and his team "intentionally withheld information and allowed perjured testimony."
"If proved, the prosecutors' conduct violated the law and ethical rules," Painter wrote. "And it is something that the disciplinary counsel for the Ohio Supreme Court should examine."
But the appeals court found that, even if proven, the misconduct didn't support overturning Wogenstahl's conviction.
Deters brushes off charges of misconduct as standard operating procedure for defense attorneys.
"Claims of prosecutorial misconduct are routinely made and, at least in my case, I know of none that have resulted in the affirmance of conviction," he says. "I think there are prosecutors that can go too far, but in my case, no. I don't try cases that way."
However, in State v. Keenan, the Ohio Supreme Court ordered a new trial because of prosecutorial misconduct. In three other Ohio cases in recent years, state and federal courts have granted legal relief in part because of prosecutorial misconduct.
Tim Payne, the state public defender in the Wogenstahl case, says the charges are serious — but even if a higher court rules in Wogenstahl's favor, it's not likely much will happen to Deters. As far as Payne knows, the ultimate penalty for a prosecutor who breaks the law while prosecuting a case — being disbarred — has never happened in Ohio. Yet those who are facing a death sentence pay with their lives for mistakes by a prosecutor, a defense attorney or the courts, he says.
"The application of the death penalty is freakish and arbitrary," Payne says. "Most of the general public believes the 190 or so inmates on Death Row in Ohio are the worst of the worst offenders, that these people are the hard-core offenders, that they would have extensive criminal records, they're incapable of rehabilitation, that they fall into the category of the Jeff Dahmer types.
"There are a few that meet that category, but a lot of them aren't. It's more a function of what county you come from, what attorney you have, what judge you get and who led the prosecution as opposed to the viciousness of the person."
In order to be eligible for the death penalty in Ohio, the crime must involve aggravating circumstances such as killing while committing another felony or killing multiple victims. The Ohio Revised Code has a menu of options. Whether a prosecutor believes a particular crime fits those descriptions and she wants to try such a case will determine if the death penalty is sought.
Gallagher believes that's another problem.
"It's not difficult for a creative prosecutor to find another felony to charge in order to seek the death penalty," he says. "In other jurisdictions, they'll never seek the death penalty. Or they will only seek the death penalty when it involves a police officer, a fire fighter or a corrections officer killed in the line of duty or where multiple victims are involved."
Deters takes issue with that kind of approach. He has committed to seeking the death penalty in every possible case where "there's no proof problem." Nor will he allow plea bargains, believing a jury is supposed to decide a sentence.
"I fully appreciate the prosecution has the discretion to seek or not to seek the death penalty," he says. "But the problem is that when you do that, when you decide, 'You know what? In this case, I'm not seeing the death penalty,' you can permit biases to creep into decisions. You can let factors that juries decide enter into charging decisions. I think it's a very dangerous path to go down in those types of cases. Especially in death penalty cases, consistency is critical.
"Ohio has a law that says, 'If you have these facts, it's a death penalty case.' What if the next prosecutor says, 'DUI is a bunch of bullshit. I'm not doing that any more'? Would that be right? When you start picking and choosing the laws you want to enforce, it's very dangerous."
'One cannot imagine'
This black-and-white view of the law doesn't address how the facts are interpreted. Citing the different rates of death penalty prosecution in counties throughout the state, Payne says one of his cases from Hamilton County underscores the capriciousness of its application.
"In Hamilton County, (where) the prosecuting attorneys have been aggressive in pursuing the death penalty, Jeffrey Hill is an example of that," Payne says. "It's a domestic murder, where the evidence suggests that the defendant just snapped because of his drug-induced state that lacks the premeditation that you'd normally see in a death penalty murder. In this case, he took some money from his mother to get more drugs. It's not like he went into the house to commit robbery and murder. I think it's more about chance and happenstance and arbitrariness." (See "Killing a Family," issue of March 1.)
A recent ruling by the mostly Republican Ohio Supreme Court again demonstrates the subjective nature of death penalty decisions. The court ruled that mitigating factors, the circumstances of a murderer's life and other issues that influence his crime are to be taken into account by juries and judges when deciding if execution is appropriate.
Writing in support of the majority opinion, vacating a death sentence in Ohio v. Tenace, Justice Evelyn Lundberg Stratton wrote, "In reading the record, one cannot imagine a more terrible, depraved and damaging childhood than that which the defendant suffered. He was victimized constantly as a child. The only skills taught him by the adults in his life were how to commit crimes and how to use drugs. All his siblings are now in prison, none being able to rise above their doomed childhood. If these facts don't present a case in which mitigation finally outweighs the aggravating circumstances, then I can imagine no fact pattern that would. While it still in no way justifies the brutal murder, his terrible childhood does militate against the death penalty in favor of a life sentence."
The mitigating factors in Tenace's case included being repeatedly forced to watch his sister being sexually assaulted, being sold into prostitution with adult males by his mother, being physically abused by at least one of his mother's boyfriends, being forced to move on a regular basis, never celebrating birthdays or holidays, serving as a pawn in the custody battles between his parents and having to assist his mother in robberies beginning at the age of 11. His childhood was characterized as "a tutorial for criminal behavior" by the clinical psychologist assigned to his case, and she diagnosed him with post-traumatic stress disorder, anti-social personality disorder, substance dependence and a depressive disorder.
"The Department of Corrections has identified 40 inmates with serious mental illness," Payne says. "Twenty percent of those are on Death Row."
"They're bi-polar or have schizophrenia, people who need anti-psychotic medication," he says. "Every client I've had has had mental health issues. There's a tendency for these clients to come from very troubled backgrounds. Many come from broken homes."
If a person can understand the charges against her and assist her attorney with her defense, she's considered competent to stand trial. Insanity is an extreme form of mental illness and the only one recognized by the system as eliminating guilt.
Another variable is the low number of attorneys certified to handle the defense in death-penalty cases. Judges frequently have a small pool from which to draw.
They also choose people who won't rock the boat, according to Clark. He believes that's why he didn't get a single death penalty case in the six years he was certified, while less aggressive lawyers received multiple cases during that same time.
In Ohio, judges are elected and must present a "tough on crime" image to get votes, so calling into question a conviction is less likely to happen. The system allows them to pass the buck to federal judges, who are appointed for life, even though the federal courts are required to pay deference to state decisions, greatly diminishing the system of checks and balances.
Tortured to death
Beyond the court system, there are other problems in Ohio's death penalty system. Most notable was the botched execution of Joseph Clark on May 2 (see "No Way to Kill a Dog," issue of May 10).
The lethal injection procedure, which usually takes 15 to 20 minutes, lasted more than an hour and a half. Once the chemicals started flowing, they failed to kill Clark, and a new intravenous line had to be inserted. Clark could be heard "moaning and groaning" by witnesses.
The question of cruel and unusual punishment is also raised in the case of Richard Cooey. State public defender Kelly Culshaw is challenging the execution protocol on behalf of Cooey and other inmates.
"I think the reason this is being called into question across the United States is the American Veterinary Association guidelines prohibit veterinarians from putting animals to sleep with the same drugs that we use to put inmates to death," Culshaw says. "If we can't do this to the family dog, is this an appropriate procedure to kill a human being?"
Given the U.S. Supreme Court's June ruling in Hill v. McDonough, affirming the right of the convicted to challenge the state's method of execution, the Ohio challenge has a good chance of going forward.
"I don't think it will matter to those who support the death penalty, but I think it should," Culshaw says. "It speaks to who we are as a society if we're willing to torture people to death. I think it lowers us. I don't want to be, as a citizen, party to a horrific, torturous murder. I think we want to be better than our lowest common denominator."
Carol Parcell says she isn't worried that her son, Brett Hartmann, will become a victim of the state's blind vengeance because she's convinced his innocence will prevail. However, the threat of his execution makes her daily life so difficult she likens it to living in a pressure cooker.
"You're always hanging," she says. "You're constantly waiting for decisions. It took three years for Brett to get to the Ohio Supreme Court. Now you don't want to agitate for the judicial system to do it faster or they'll slough it off. They won't research it or give it all the attention you want them to give it."
There are few outlets for that kind of concern when the ruling made by a handful of judges is so crucial.
"When you get angry and when you see things that are wrong and when you hear things that are wrong, you keep quiet," Parcell says. "The lawyers tell you not to talk, especially don't talk to the media because they have taken and twisted things. You're going in for appeals, and if you talk, the media can take it and twist it and judges read the paper. One doesn't want to kid oneself that they're never influenced by anything."
The disabled woman now shares a home with her daughter because she's living on social security after three hip replacements, and she can't make ends meet after the loss of her son's income. Now that Ohio has moved condemned inmates from a prison in Mansfield to the supermax prison in Youngstown, she's able to visit her son more frequently. But Parcell says there isn't much to talk about because neither of them gets out much.
Other Death Row inmates have plenty to say about maltreatment they suffer while living under the added restrictions from which the general prison population is exempt. Many inmates spend decades there, only to be killed after serving that sentence.
In an interview on Death Row at the supermax prison, inmate James Mills of Cincinnati discussed his 18 years waiting to be killed.
"We're generally treated like animals," Mills said. "This is what these people try to make us. They try to make us the perception that they have of us: 'You're all animals. Ya act like animals. Ya carry yourselves like animals.'
"What's that all about? They create that perception, and they want you to conform to it. And when you don't conform to it, then you're being an asshole, a smart ass, a smart aleck or whatever you wanna call it."
Mills said the guards are condescending and cruel.
"These people are prolific liars," he said. "They have no problem whatsoever lying to you. They will tell you two and two is six and expect you to believe it. Then when you don't believe it, well, 'You're a smart ass! You're a smart ass!' When you know you're being lied to, it pisses you off.
"They think all of us is dumb, stupid. 'You killer, murderer.' They don't know nothin' about our cases. Someone's always in your face, got a name for you, trying to nail it to your back. You might be smiling, but you're probably seething on the inside."
Writing to pen pals serves as an outlet for Mills' frustrations because he has limited support from those on the outside.
"I don't like getting visitors much," he said. "I discourage it. You get the same emotions the people are feeling. You're feeling them, too, but you try to hold up and not express them. I'm not going to admit to something. You got to be strong. It wears on you. Would you like to be visited in a spot like this? You wouldn't."
Mills said he receives material support from his family — typing paper, ribbons for his typewriter — because they aren't in a position to do anything else. He appreciates the support he receives from those who oppose the death penalty and working toward abolition.
"I've always been an opponent of the death penalty," he said. "I think it's an indication of just how ignorant this society is. If you think killing is going to solve killing, then there's something wrong with you." ©
Ohio Death Penalty Information
Category State Information
Number of Executions Since 1976 21
Number of Executions Before 1976 438
Current Death Row Population 195
Number of Women 2
Year Death Penalty Re-enacted 1974
First Execution After Re-enactment 1999
Murder Rate (per 100,000) 4.5
Is Life Without Parole an Option? Yes
Can a Defendant Get Death for a Felony in Which S/He Wasn't Responsible for the Murder? No
Number of Innocent Persons Freed From Death Row 5
Number of Clemencies Granted 9
Method Injection
How Is the Sentence Determined? Jury
Location of Death Row(s) Men: Youngstown; Women: Marysville)
Clemency Process Governor has authority to grant
clemency with non-binding advice of Board of Pardons and Paroles
Table courtesy of the Death Penalty Information Center: www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/state
Death Penalty Information Resources
Learn more about the death penalty, work to end executions in Ohio or find resources available to those dealing with a death sentence:
The Intercommunity Justice and Peace Center (IJPC) has information and resources about state executions and related activities at web.amnesty.org/pages/deathpenalty-index-eng.
The Kentucky Collation to Abolish the Death Penalty has a Web site at www.kcadp.org.
The Indiana Information Center for the Abolition of Capital Punishment is located in the state where federal death penalty executions are carried out, including Timothy McVeigh's. Visit www.iicacp.org.
