Alaskans Against the Death Penalty

The Chairman of a state task force to reform Ohio's death penalty and two former state Attorney Generals have joined a diverse coalition of public officials, death-row exonerees, family members of murder victims, former corrections officials, and religious leaders urging Ohio Governor John Kasich to halt the state's planned resumption of executions. Citing legislative inaction on critical reforms, the high risk of error, and botched executions, the groups held a press conference (pictured) on July 29 detailing their opposition to Ohio's planned execution of 27 prisoners between July 2017 and September 2020, and delivered to the governor petitions with over 27,000 signatures asking that executions not resume. Ohio has not carried out an execution since it botched the execution of Dennis McGuire in January 2014, but is scheduled to execute Ronald Phillips on July 25. In April 2014, a Joint Task Force to Review the Administration of Ohio’s Death Penalty created by the Ohio Supreme Court issued a detailed report highly critical of the state's death penalty, and recommended 56 reforms to prevent wrongful convictions and unfair and arbitrary death sentences. In a written statement read at the press conference, the Task Force's chairman, now retired Judge James Brogan, called Ohio's planned resumption of executions "very troubling," saying that "[t]hose charged with ensuring our capital punishment system is fair and accurate have failed to act." Ohio "should not resume executions without addressing" the Task Force's reforms, Brogan said. Former Ohio Attorney Generals, Democrat Jim Petro and Republican Lee Fisher also urged Governor Kasich to extend the current freeze on Ohio executions. In a July 20 guest column in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, they wrote, "we strongly believe that Ohio should not execute again until important safeguards are in place." They said the 3½-year break since Ohio's last execution "should have been used to improve the Ohio death penalty system. Instead, not a single substantive reform has been put in place to prevent wrongful convictions and improve fairness in Ohio's capital punishment system." Kwame Ajamu — one of the 9 Ohio death-row exonerees — also spoke at the press conference, stressing the risk of killing an innocent prisoner if executions resume. Family members of murder victims, corrections officials, and faith leaders, also spoke out against resuming executions and submitted letters to the Governor. “We are not asking the state to turn its back on people who commit serious crimes," said Pastor Carl Ruby with the Central Christian Church. "We are in favor of hard-life sentences for people who commit despicable crimes, but the death penalty eliminates the possibility [of correcting mistakes if] we got it wrong." 

Phillips and other prisoners facing execution have challenged the lethal-injection formula that Ohio intends to use, saying that it will violate their right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment and that the state has reneged on its promise to never use two painful and agonizing drugs in executions. The prisoners won a stay of execution in Ohio federal district court, but a divided U.S. Court of Appeals reversed that decision. The prisoners have asked the Supreme Court to review their case and stay their executions.   

(A. Johnson, Faith leaders, others urge Kasich to halt resumption of Ohio executions, Columbus Dispatch, July 19, 2017; J. Provance, Gov. John Kasich urged to block Ohio's plan to resume executions, The Blade, July 19, 2017; R. Reitzel, Group asks Governor Kasich to stop scheduled executions, NBC4i.com, July 19, 2017; J. Petro and L. Fisher, "Gov. John Kasich should prevent Ohio executions from resuming," Cleveland Plain Dealer, July 20, 2017.)  Read the Press Release. 

A new generation of prosecutors, elected across the country on a platform of criminal justice reform, are taking a different approach to criminal justice policies than their predecessors, including a reduction in the use of capital punishment. A Christian Science Monitor profile of these prosecutors—focusing on Mark Gonzalez (pictured), the Nueces County, Texas, district attorney—says "[f]rom Texas to Florida to Illinois, many of these young prosecutors are eschewing the death penalty, talking rehabilitation as much as punishment, and often refusing to charge people for minor offenses." Their reform measures not only create greater opportunities for rehabilitation of offenders, but also reduce costs for the county and state governments. Stanford Law Professor David Alan Sklansky said, “It does seem to be a new and significant phenomenon. It’s rare to see so many races where the district attorney is challenged, where they lose, and where they lost to candidates calling not for harsher approaches, but for more balanced and thoughtful, more restrained, more progressive approaches to punishment.” In 2016, several new prosecutors who ran on reform platforms in major death-penalty counties defeated entrenched incumbents: Kim Ogg in Harris County, Texas; Andrew Warren in Hillsborough County, Florida; and Charles Henderson in Jefferson County, Alabama all pledged to reduce the use of capital punishment. Caddo Parish, Louisiana's District Attorney James Stewart, elected in 2015, has backed away from that parish's aggressive use of the death penalty while Denver District Attorney Beth McCann and Orlando State Attorney Aramis Ayala, both elected in 2016, have said they would not pursue the death penalty. In May 2017, Larry Krasner, a death-penalty opponent, won the Democratic nomination for Philadelphia District Attorney, making him the favorite to win the general election in November. Kim Ogg described the reasons for her support of criminal-justice reform, saying, “In the last decade the American people have literally lost faith in the fairness of our justice system. If they think we’re rigging the system, or trying to force outcomes, then they’re not going to participate, and to me that is a huge threat to our democracy.” Gonzalez says he has not decided how he will approach the death penalty, and in the meantime is still filing death penalty cases. But, he says, “We’re trying to change things. ... The culture is changing.”

(H. Gass, "Meet a new breed of prosecutor," Christian Science Monitor, July 17, 2017.) See New Voices.