death penalty
The death penalty costs Ohio hundreds of millions of dollars. It hasn’t been used in years
The following article was originally published on News5Cleveland.com and is published in the Ohio Capital Journal under a content-sharing agreement. Unlike other OCJ articles, it is not available for free republication by other news outlets as it is owned by WEWS in Cleveland. Ohio’s death penalty program costs the state hundreds of millions, but it […]
With bipartisan support, it’s time to stop Ohio from executing people
Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost appears to have used a normally factual state report on the death penalty to make his case for resuming executions. Going back to when it was first issued by AG Betty Montgomery, the Ohio Capital Crimes Report provided a valuable record of all executions and death penalty cases in Ohio. […]
The death penalty does nothing to keep us safe. Let’s end it now.
I was a 35-year-old military veteran working for the U.S. Postal Service in Phoenix when my life was turned upside down. I was arrested and charged for a crime I knew nothing about. My trial only lasted four days and the jury convicted me after deliberating for only four hours. A Maricopa County, Arizona judge […]
Ohio House Republicans looking to create states rights ‘Tenth Amendment Center’ in AG’s Office
A group of 14 Ohio House Republicans are putting forward a bill to create a states rights “Tenth Amendment Center” within the office of the state attorney general. Ohio House Bill 506 creates a Tenth Amendment center to “actively monitor federal executive orders, federal statutes, and federal regulations for potential abuse or overreach, including assertion […]
Experts: Trauma builds, ending for some at death row
Invariably, the crimes over which people land on death row are soaked in trauma, often consisting of the most violent deaths suffered by sympathetic victims. But it’s also often the case that those accused of perpetrating them have traumatic histories of their own. On Thursday, a pair of experts told a group of defense attorneys […]
Family member of death row exoneree speaks out
When a man named Dale Johnston began dating my mother-in-law in 1998, I admit that I was uneasy. In the town where we lived, his name had become synonymous with brutality, violence, and evil. In 1982, the bodies of Dale’s stepdaughter, Annette Cooper and her fiancé, Todd Schultz, had been discovered in pieces along the […]
Fifty years in, death penalty still unworkable, group says
If there’s a way to make the death penalty nonarbitrary and nondiscriminatory, the United States hasn’t found it, a group that studies capital punishment said in a report released Tuesday. Wednesday marks the 50th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court decision Furman v Georgia. It effectively put the death penalty on hold after the court […]
Ohio gets closer to abolishing death penalty
The following article was originally published on News5Cleveland.com and is published in the Ohio Capital Journal under a content-sharing agreement. Unlike other OCJ articles, it is not available for free republication by other news outlets as it is owned by WEWS in Cleveland. Ohio hasn’t executed a prisoner in about four years, but capital […]
Group highlights the parallels between lynching and the modern death penalty
An anti-death penalty group in Ohio is arguing that lynchings in the 19th and early 20th centuries had a lot in common with the way the modern death penalty is applied. On Thursday it will highlight Ohio lynchings to make that case. The argument delves deeply into a complex and often painful past that some […]
In 2021 the death penalty faded further in Ohio, U.S.
In 2021, the death penalty faded further in Ohio, U.S.
Law, religion come together in support of death penalty ban
Supporters of a measure to eliminate the death penalty in Ohio include religious and legal leaders, who say the concept is both a waste of the state’s money and time, and unethical. “The death penalty is the most inefficient government program in existence in Ohio today,” said Timothy Young, Ohio’s state public defender. “I don’t […]
Son of murder victim urges legislature to end death penalty quickly
By Jonathan Mann Thomas Knuff, the man who murdered my father, was sentenced to death in 2019. Knuff brutally murdered my father and I live with the pain and grief of that violent loss every single day. Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Michael O’Malley sought the death penalty for Thomas Knuff and got the conviction. But when […]