Gov. Mike DeWine (R-OH) called Tuesday for abolishing the death penalty in the Buckeye State, abandoning a position he held for decades and distancing himself from a law he helped write more than 40 years ago.“The moral justification I had no longer exists,” DeWine told reporters during a Tuesday news conference with less than a year remaining in his final term. “I do not believe that argument today can be successfully made, nor do I believe there’s any chance in the future the facts that I’ve cited to support that belief will change,” the 79-year-old governor said. “Therefore, I believe Ohio should abolish the death penalty.”
DeWine co-authored Ohio’s 1981 capital punishment law after the Supreme Court struck down existing death penalty statutes nationwide in 1972.
“I no longer believe the death penalty is a deterrent for murder,” he said.
The governor pointed to statistics showing how rarely death sentences are carried out in practice. Of the 337 people sentenced to death in Ohio since 1981, 56 have been executed by lethal injection, while 41 died of natural causes or suicide while awaiting execution.
Ohio resumed imposing death sentences under the 1981 law, but executions did not restart until 1999.
