Capital punishment in Ohio

Capital punishment in Ohio is legal. Since 1885, a total of 389 individuals have been executed in the U.S. state of Ohio. A total of 154 people are under a sentence of death in the state as of November 15, 2011. The current method of execution in Ohio is lethal injection.

Process

The jury does decide the sentence in capital cases. Juror can vote for the death penalty, life without parole, or life with a 30 years or 25 years non-parole period. Clemency rests with the governor of Ohio, who receives a non-binding report from the Ohio Parole Board.

As in any other state, people who are under 18 at the time of commission of the capital crime or mentally retarded are constitutionally precluded from being executed.

Locations and method

Executions in Ohio are currently performed at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville. Since January 2012, death row for the majority of male inmates is located at the Chillicothe Correctional Institution (CCI) in Chillicothe. A few high security male death row inmates are held at the Ohio State Penitentiary (OSP) in Youngstown. Condemned female inmates are housed at the Ohio Reformatory for Women in Marysville and death row inmates with serious medical conditions are held at the Franklin Medical Center in Columbus. Prior to this, most male death row inmates were held at OSP with a few being held at the Mansfield Correctional Institution in Mansfield. The move to CCI allows the units at OSP and Mansfield to be used to separate violent inmates from the general population and will provide increased security and reduce transportation costs to both the execution chamber at SOCF and to the Franklin Medical Center for inmate medical treatment.

In 1885, the legislature enacted a law that required executions to be carried out at the Ohio Penitentiary in Columbus by hanging. In 1897 the gallows were replaced by the electric chair, which was considered to be a more technologically advanced and humane form of execution. Ohio also became the second state to use the electric chair. 28 hangings, and 315 electrocutions were carried out at the now defunct Ohio Penitentiary in Columbus between 1885 and 1963.

In November 2009, Ohio announced that it would use a single drug only for lethal injections, consisting of a single dose of Sodium thiopental, the first state to do so. The first single drug execution was of Kenneth Biros, 51, on Tuesday, December 8, 2009. Biros was convicted of murdering 22-year-old Tami Engstrom near Masury, Ohio in 1991. Biros' counsel indicated to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit that Biros' execution, given that it is the first of its kind, may amount to "human experimentation." Various appeals for clemency were ultimately denied. Ohio announced in January 2011 that it will change the drug used from sodium thiopental to pentobarbital, as the availability of sodium thiopental has become quite scarce. The first execution using pentobarbital, that of Johnnie Baston, occurred on March 10, 2011.

Capital offenses

Aggravated murder with at least one of the following special circumstances:

• The defendant knowingly created a grave risk of death for one or more persons in addition to the victim of the offense.
• The murder was committed for pecuniary gain or pursuant to an agreement that the defendant would receive something of value.
• The capital offense was committed by a person who is incarcerated, has escaped, is on probation, is in jail, or is under a sentence of imprisonment.
• The offender in the commission of the offense, purposefully caused the death of another who was under thirteen years of age at the time of the commission of the offense and the defendant committed the offense with prior calculation and design.
• The offense was the assassination of the president of the United States or person in line of succession to the presidency, or of the governor or lieutenant governor of this state, or of the president-elect or vice president-elect of the United States, or of the governor-elect of this state, or of a candidate for any of the foregoing offices.
• The murder was committed against a witness in a criminal proceeding to prevent the witness from appearing, or for revenge.
• The offense was committed while the offender was committing, attempting to commit, or fleeing immediately after committing or attempting to commit terrorism.

List of individuals executed since 1976

All of the following individuals have been executed for murder since the Furman decision. All 46 were executed by lethal injection. Notable persons executed in Ohio before the Furman decision include Anna Marie Hahn.

	Executed person	Date of execution	Murder victim(s)	Governor
1	Wilford Berry, Jr.	February 19, 1999	Charles Mitroff	Bob Taft
2	Jay D. Scott	June 14, 2001	Vinnie M. Price	Bob Taft
3	John William Byrd, Jr.	February 19, 2002	Monte Tewksbury	Bob Taft
4	Alton Coleman	April 26, 2002	Tonnie Storey and Marlene Walters	Bob Taft
5	Robert Anthony Buell	September 24, 2002	Krista Harrison	Bob Taft
6	Richard Edwin Fox	February 12, 2003	Leslie Renae Keckler	Bob Taft
7	David M. Brewer	April 29, 2003	Sherry Byrne	Bob Taft
8	Ernest Martin	June 18, 2003	Robert Robinson	Bob Taft
9	Lewis Williams, Jr.	January 14, 2004	Leoma Chmielewski	Bob Taft
10	John Glenn Roe	February 3, 2004	Donette Crawford	Bob Taft
11	William Dean Wickline	March 30, 2004	Peggy Lerch and Christopher Lerch	Bob Taft
12	William G. Zuern, Jr.	June 8, 2004	Phillip Pence	Bob Taft
13	Stephen Allan Vrabel	July 14, 2004	Susan Clemente and Lisa Clemente	Bob Taft
14	Scott Andrew Mink	July 20, 2004	William Mink and Sheila Mink	Bob Taft
15	Adremy Dennis	October 13, 2004	Kurt Kyle	Bob Taft
16	William Smith	March 8, 2005	Mary Bradford	Bob Taft
17	Herman Dale Ashworth	September 27, 2005	Daniel L. Baker	Bob Taft
18	William James "Flip" Williams, Jr.	October 25, 2005	William Dent, Alfonda R. Madison, Sr., Eric Howard and Theodore Wynn, Jr.	Bob Taft
19	John R. Hicks	November 29, 2005	Brandy Green	Bob Taft
20	Glenn Lee Benner II	February 7, 2006	Trina Bowser and Cynthia Sedgwick	Bob Taft
21	Joseph Lewis Clark	May 2, 2006	David A. Manning and Donald B. Harris	Bob Taft
22	Rocky Barton	July 12, 2006	Kimbirli Jo Barton	Bob Taft
23	Darrell Ferguson	August 8, 2006	Thomas King, Arlie Fugate and Mae Fugate	Bob Taft
24	Jeffrey Lundgren	October 24, 2006	Dennis Avery, Cheryl Avery, Trina Avery, Rebecca Avery and Karen Avery	Bob Taft
25	James Filiaggi	April 24, 2007	Lisa Huff Filiaggi	Ted Strickland
26	Christopher Newton	May 24, 2007	Jason Brewer	Ted Strickland
27	Richard Cooey	October 14, 2008	Wendy Offredo and Dawn McCreery	Ted Strickland
28	Gregory Bryant-Bey	November 19, 2008	Dale Pinkelman and Pete Mihas	Ted Strickland
29	Daniel Wilson	June 3, 2009	Carol Lutz	Ted Strickland
30	John Fautenberry	July 14, 2009	Joseph Daron Jr., Jefferson Difee, Gary Farmer, Christine Guthrie, and Donald Nutley	Ted Strickland
31	Marvallous Keene	July 21, 2009	Sarah Abraham, Wendy Cottrill, Danita Gullette, Marvin Washington, and Joseph Wilkerson	Ted Strickland
32	Jason Getsy	August 18, 2009	Ann Serafino	Ted Strickland
33	Kenneth Biros	December 8, 2009	Tami Engstrom	Ted Strickland
34	Vernon Smith	January 7, 2010	Sohail Darwish	Ted Strickland
35	Mark Brown	February 4, 2010	Hayder Al-Turk, Isam Salman	Ted Strickland
36	Lawrence Reynolds	March 16, 2010	Loretta Foster	Ted Strickland
37	Darryl Durr	April 20, 2010	Angel Vincent	Ted Strickland
38	Michael Beuke	May 13, 2010	Robert Craig	Ted Strickland
39	William Garner	July 13, 2010	Deondra Freeman, Richard Gaines, Markeca Mason, Mykkila Mason, and Denitra Satterwhite	Ted Strickland
40	Roderick Davie	August 10, 2010	John Ira Coleman, Tracey Jeffreys	Ted Strickland
41	Michael Benge	October 6, 2010	Judith Gabbard	Ted Strickland
42	Frank Spisak	February 17, 2011	Rev. Horace Rickerson, Brian Warford, and Timothy Sheehan	John Kasich
43	Johnnie Baston	March 10, 2011	Chong-Hoon Mah	John Kasich
44	Clarence Carter	April 12, 2011	Johnny Allen	John Kasich
45	Daniel Lee Bedford	May 17, 2011	Gwen Toepfert and John Smith	John Kasich
46	Reginald Brooks Sr.	November 15, 2011	Reginald Brooks Jr., Vaughn Brooks, Niarchos Brooks	John Kasich

Demographics

The demographic information on the 34 inmates executed in Ohio between February 19, 1999 and January 7, 2010 is as follows:^{[citation needed]}

• Mean Age at Time of Execution: 44 years, 1.9 months
• Mean Time from Death Sentence to Execution: 14 years, 6 months
• Median Time from Death Sentence to Execution: 15 years, 11 months

See also

• Capital punishment in the United States

External links

These links are to official State of Ohio records regarding executions in the state and Ohio administrative rules and statutes pertaining to capital punishment in Ohio

• Death House tour on YouTube
• Ohio execution chamber
• Ohio Executions 1999 to Present from the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction
• Capital Crimes 2005 Annual Report from the Ohio Attorney General's Office (issued April 1, 2006)
• Ohio Administrative Code 5120-9-12 Department of Rehabilitation and Correction -- Institutional rules: death row
• Ohio Revised Code § 2903.01 Aggravated murder
• Ohio Revised Code §§ 2949.21-2949.31 Death Sentence
• Ohio Revised Code § 2929.02 Penalties for murder
• All Ohio death row inmates
• Southern Ohio Correctional Facility (Location of execution chamber).
• Ohio State Penitentiary (Location of death row for male inmates)
• Ohio Reformatory for Women (Location of death row for female inmates)