COLUMBUS, Ohio — Republican Gov. Mike DeWine said Tuesday that Ohio should abolish the death penalty, saying it is no longer a deterrent to violent crime, confirming his change of heart on the policy he helped write as a state legislator 45 years ago.
“I do not believe that argument today can be successfully made, nor do I believe that there’s any chance in the future the facts that I’ve cited to support that belief will change,” the 79-year-old governor said during a news conference. “Therefore, I believe Ohio should abolish the death penalty.”
DeWine has repeatedly postponed scheduled executions in the state during his two four-year terms as governor.
During a news conference, he said data indicates the death penalty is not deterring crime, even as it brings years of pain to victims' loved ones and takes a toll on the mental health of state employees who serve on execution teams.
To bolster his case, DeWine brandished charts and graphs detailing the diminishing number of death sentences meted out by courts and showing the exceedingly long wait times that elapse as legal appeals play out for those on death row. He said condemned murderers are increasingly unlikely to ever be executed, sometimes dying by natural causes or by suicide before their execution date arrives.
“In summary, each decade that the death penalty has been in effect, the chances of a murderer getting executed get more and more and more remote,” DeWine said.
DeWine, who faces a term limit in December, said he felt compelled to share his observations now, having had 50 years of experience with the issue from the time he was a young county prosecutor, through being a congressman and U.S. senator, and then serving as Ohio's attorney general. But he said his outright opposition to the procedure has only crystallized over the past year.
State lawmakers may not support DeWine's stance
Headed into the announcement, any chance of a legislative repeal of the death penalty appeared unlikely.
Republican House Speaker Matt Huffman said in February he would “vigorously oppose” such an effort, and then-Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost agreed with him on social media. It remains unclear how Interim Attorney General Andy Wilson, appointed last month to serve the remainder of Yost's term, will respond, and whether the position held by Huffman, who is Catholic, might be affected by immediate praise for DeWine's announcement by the Catholic Conference of Ohio.
“In a state and country in which alternatives to execution exist, we should support punishments that are in greater conformity with the dignity of the human person, made in the image and likeness of God,” executive director Brian Hickey said in a statement.
In repeatedly extending Ohio's unofficial death penalty moratorium by postponing scheduled executions, DeWine has cited pharmaceutical suppliers' unwillingness to provide the drugs used in lethal injections. In January 2025, President Donald Trump ordered then-U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to help states try to resolve that issue, and Yost — a capital punishment supporter — had told Bondi that "without the assistance of the federal government, Ohio's situation is unlikely to change."
DeWine has already said he expects no further executions during his term, but he said the compelling nature of the death penalty data remains the same whether you include the past seven years or not.
Other states also have been rethinking the procedure in recent years. New Hampshire state lawmakers overrode a governor’s veto in 2019 to abolish the death penalty in that state. Colorado followed suit in 2020 and Virginia in 2021. Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro has urged legislators to follow suit, announcing he wouldn’t sign any new execution warrants. Gov. Kate Brown commuted sentences of the 17 people on Oregon’s death row in 2022 and ordered the execution chamber dismantled.
DeWine’s position on executions has changed over time
Pushing back the dates for condemned killers to be put to death has left Ohio with 30 executions scheduled over the next four years, according to the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction.
Ohio hasn't put an inmate to death since July 18, 2018, when Robert Van Hook was executed for stabbing a man he met at a Cincinnati bar in 1985. DeWine assumed the governor's office in 2019.
The state declared execution unconstitutional in 1972, but reinstated capital punishment in 1981 under a law co-written by DeWine. Ohio resumed death penalties in 1999 and 56 people have since died by lethal injection in the state.
DeWine's support for the death penalty has slowly shifted during since his political career began in 1976. As attorney general, DeWine ordered the Ohio prison system to consider alternative lethal injection drugs. A year later, in 2020, he said lawmakers would have to choose a different method before any more inmates could be executed.
Since then, neither a bipartisan push to ban the practice nor a competing effort to bring nitrogen gas executions to Ohio has gone anywhere. A nitrogen gas execution in Alabama was halted last week, after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to set aside a lower-court ruling that found the method unconstitutionally cruel.
Advocates hail DeWine's position
Kevin Werner, executive director of Ohioans to Stop Executions, said the governor's decision is in line with “an evolution on the death penalty” across the political spectrum in Ohio.
“Nobody supports a system that harms victim families, convicts innocent people and wastes millions of dollars without a shred of improved public safety,” Werner said.
Abraham Bonowitz, executive director of Death Penalty Action, said his group had been anticipating DeWine’s announcement.
“What Gov. DeWine said today is that it doesn’t work, it doesn’t do what we think it’s going to do,” Bonowitz said. “So I’m just grateful that he has made a well-reasoned decision based on his own decades of experience.”
Former Republican Governor of Ohio Bob Taft, who oversaw 24 executions from 1999 to 2007, said in a statement he agrees with DeWine. "As a former governor, I know what it's like to contend with this issue and I support his decision," Taft said. "The Legislature taking up the issue and passing repeal this year is in the best interest of the people of Ohio." ___
Associated Press reporter John Raby in Cross Lanes, West Virginia, contributed.
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