Basic Overview in Ohio
In Ohio alone, 53 people have been killed since 1976. 142 people are on death row and while many are trying to appeal their sentences, and only 9 have successfully avoided being executed. In fact, “Cuyahoga and Summit Counties... are responsible for more than 25% of Ohio’s death sentences” (Death Penalty Information Center - Ohio para 2). However, the state is having problems actually getting the drugs they need for lethal injections, and until they can find the drugs they need, the executions will be postponed. “Ohio has trouble getting drugs to use for lethal injections in great part because pharmaceutical companies don’t want their medical products used for killing people” (Higgs para 7). Although the state has trouble finding drugs, it hasn’t stopped sentencing people to death. |
Racial Injustice
In Ohio, data from a recent study showed that a person convicted of killing a white female was six times more likely to be put on death row than a person who killed a black male. Cuyahoga County was also found to have almost eleven times the amount of executions than the average county. Sharon L. Davies, Executive Director of the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at The Ohio State University, said that the "race or gender of a victim, and the county of the crime, should not influence who is sentenced to die" and urged "Ohio citizens and lawmakers[to] review the findings of this important research" (Death Penalty Information Center - Ohio para 6). |
The Progress Towards Abolishing the Penalty
There are many reasons why people want the death penalty abolished. As Helen Prejean, a nun who works to abolish the death penalty has said, “[a]llowing our government to kill citizens compromises the deepest moral values upon which this country was conceived: the inviolable dignity of the human persons.” The first steps to ending the death penalty in Ohio have already been taken. “A bipartisan bill that would abolish the death penalty in Ohio is pending in the Ohio House. It was introduced last July by Democratic Rep. Nickle Antonio of Lakewood and Republican Rep. Niraj Antani of Miamisburg” (Higgs para 17). |
In October, Ohio announced it intended to resume executions using a three-drug process to kill death row inmates that includes midazolam. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, the state has eight executions scheduled to go forward in 2017. |
In 1994, Ronald Bert Smith Jr. (an Alabama man) robbed a convicence store and killed the store's clerk. He was sentenced to death in 1995 and on December 9th, 2016, he was put to death by lethal injection.
We was killed hours after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to stop the execution although there were ongoing legal challenges to the state's lethal injection protocol. Alabama's injection protocol calls for the concited person to be executed using three different drugs. The first drug is a sedative called midazolam. In 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the drug's use in executions in a 5-4 decision after a group of Oklahoma death row inmates argued it led to cruel and unusual punishment because the drug did not reliably render an inmate unconscious. This fall, Smith and other Alabama death row plaintiffs unsuccessfully argued that midazolam was an unreliable sedative and could cause them to feel pain, citing its use in problematic executions including the botched execution of an Oklahoma man in 2014. A federal judge dismissed the case in November. Smith was still kept on death row. The Associated Press reported that it took around 34 minutes for him to die. They described the ordeal as: "During 13 minutes of the execution, from about 10:34 to 10:47, Smith appeared to be struggling for breath and heaved and coughed and clenched his left fist after apparently being administered the first drug in the three-drug combination. At times his left eye also appeared to be slightly open. A Department of Corrections captain performed two consciousness checks before they proceeded with administering the next two drugs to stop his breathing and heart. The consciousness tests consist of the corrections officer calling out Smith's name, brushing his eyebrows back, and pinching him under his left arm. Smith continued to heave, gasp and cough after the first test was performed at 10:37 p.m. and again at 10:47 p.m.. After the second one, Smith's right arm and hand moved." |