Why Ohio Governor Mike DeWine Changed His Mind on the Death Penalty
Ohio Governor Mike DeWine has had a change of heart on the death penalty.
DeWine, who is approaching the end of his second term in the Ohio governor’s mansion, came out Tuesday against capital punishment, publicly encouraging the legislature to overturn a law he helped author while he was in the state Senate in 1981.
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“I think it’s an evolution of understanding,” DeWine told National Review.
Though critics claim that DeWine’s term-limited status prompted him to finally reveal his long-held position — he concludes his time as state governor in January 2027 — DeWine said his perspective has been taking shape for a long time.
“When I voted in favor of the death penalty bill . . . I felt that in some cases it was, in fact, a deterrent,” he said, explaining that he believed the threat of the death penalty might drive down homicide rates.
Now, after decades of experience working on criminal justice policy and serving as an executive with the power to commute death penalty sentences, DeWine sees the law differently. Formerly a county prosecuting attorney, member of the U.S. House and Senate Judiciary Committees, and Ohio’s attorney general, DeWine said he has had the past 50 years to look into this issue.
“I think that we have different facts today than we did the day that we voted on it,” he told NR.
He is specifically concerned about the length of time it takes for criminals to be executed today.
“It would seem that if the death penalty were an actual deterrent for some people, it would need to happen swiftly, quickly, and with certainty,” he said during Tuesday’s press conference. DeWine told NR that it ultimately did not seem possible to “dramatically cut down on the time” between conviction and execution, given that convicts are entitled to a lengthy appeal process that can in some cases stretch for decades.
He also said there have been fewer death penalty sentences handed down over the past several years.
“I think in the last six years, we’ve had two people convicted of the death count in all the state of Ohio — in all 88 counties,” he told NR, explaining that this was largely the case “even excluding the last seven years since I’ve been governor.”
DeWine said his close contact with Ohio’s past four prison directors also shaped his decision.
He told NR that he saw the penalty’s impact on them as they prepared for the execution as well as the weight on the prison staff who perform and deal with its aftermath.
“I think it’s something that’s not usually thought about,” he said. “Yes, they volunteer to do it, but they do it at our request — the people of the state’s request — and they also bear a pretty heavy burden.”
No one has been executed since DeWine came into office in January 2019, Ohio’s last execution being that of Robert Van Hook on July 18, 2018. There are currently 114 convicts on death row in Ohio, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
The case of murderer Warren Henness was DeWine’s first death row case bearing consideration as Ohio governor. Less than two weeks after being sworn into office, DeWine received a federal court order from U.S. Magistrate Judge Michael Merz preventing him from executing Henness with the usual lethal-injection drugs.
“Executing him by Ohio’s current three-drug protocol will certainly or very likely cause him severe pain and needless suffering,” Merz said in the order. “Reading the plain language of the Eighth Amendment, that should be enough to constitute cruel and unusual punishment.”
In response, DeWine rescheduled Henness’s February 2019 execution for September 2019. He later rescheduled it again for May 2020.
The state had also been struggling to acquire the necessary lethal-injection drugs. Pharmaceutical manufacturers were unwilling to sell specific drugs to the state if they were suspected to be used in executions. DeWine asked the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction to look into other options, but the delay created an additional backlog of executions.
In March 2019, DeWine rescheduled the executions of inmates Cleveland Jackson, Kareem Jackson, and Gregory Lott as well as those of several other convicts later in the year.
Henness, Cleveland Jackson, and Kareem Jackson are still currently on death row in Ohio, according to the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction.
Henness’s execution date is December 15, 2027. Kareem Jackson’s is October 11, 2028, and Cleveland Jackson’s is June 13, 2029.
In response to a parole board recommendation and a county common pleas court motion “for Relief from Judgment” because of Lott’s mental state, DeWine commuted Lott’s death sentence, lowering it to life without parole last month.
For DeWine, Tuesday’s statement was the culmination of extensive thought and research on the issue.
“I’ve been working on this for some time, and I wrote it and rewrote it and rewrote it,” he told NR. “It’s something that I had intended to do prior to now, but with all the other things I do as governor, it just got pushed back.” He finally completed the last edit several days ago.
DeWine recognized that pushback from both parties was inevitable but is confident in his position.
“This is an issue that very good people have very different points of view,” DeWine told NR. “And I respect their points of view.”
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