“We understand this broken death penalty system’s grievous flaws, its unintended consequences, and its failure to achieve the benefits we had intended.”
In an “Open Letter” to the Ohio Senate Judiciary Committee, twenty-seven lawmakers who “debated and ultimately enacted” Ohio’s current death penalty law 44 years ago, announced they are adding their names to a list that includes former Ohio Governor Bob Taft, former Attorneys General Jim Petro and Lee Fisher, and Ohio Supreme Court Justice Paul Pfeifer in asking the members of Ohio’s General Assembly to repeal the state’s death penalty statute.
“We share their views regarding the death penalty system’s inordinate costs. . . .its uneven application that produces racial and geographic inequities in our justice system. . . . And their concern that this death penalty system has made mistakes and cannot be trusted to mete out a penalty so irrevocable,” they stated.
Noting that some of the signatories opposed enactment of the bill in 1981 while others supported it, “today we are united in our belief that it is time to retire Ohio’s death penalty.
“We ask members of the 136th General Assembly to enact Senate Bill 133 and REPEAL THE DEATH PENALTY LAW (capitalization theirs) that we of the 114th General Assembly wrote, making life imprisonment without parole Ohio’s most severe penalty.”