The campaign to end the death penalty in the United States got an important new ally on Tuesday, when Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine announced his opposition to capital punishment and called on his state’s legislature to abolish it. For a Republican leader of a red state who was a longtime supporter of the death penalty, the change of heart may have outsize influence beyond Ohio’s borders.
DeWine, who is term-limited, is showing that opposition to capital punishment is no longer just the preserve of liberals and progressive reformers. It has gone mainstream.
DeWine’s decision to call for the abolition of the death penalty marks something of a sea change in his views.
Whether or not the Ohio legislature acts on DeWine’s call and abolishes the death penalty, the governor’s stance may help give political cover to governors in other states who are convinced that it is long past time to move past the practice of state-sanctioned executions.
As I have argued previously, Ohio is one of America’s most important death penalty states. The punishment is authorized by law, but it has been more than eight years since the state carried out an execution. And it has a long history of capital punishment, as well as a large death row population.
That’s part of why DeWine’s announcement has a chance to resonate widely, though he has more to do. He needs to commute the death sentences of more than 100 people on Ohio’s death row. If and when he exercises that authority, his example may encourage his fellow chief executives in places like California, Kansas and Pennsylvania — each of whom also opposes the death penalty — to grant clemency to everyone awaiting execution in their state.
Commutations in all of those states would deliver a severe blow to capital punishment in this country.
DeWine’s decision to call for the abolition of the death penalty marks something of a sea change in his views. More than four decades ago, when he was a state senator, he led the effort to reinstate Ohio’s death penalty after the United States Supreme Court invalidated its existing law.
As Columbus’ Fox 19 explains, “Throughout his political career, [DeWine] continued his support for Ohio’s death penalty law, especially when he was elected to Congress and later as Ohio Attorney General.”
But during his tenure as governor, DeWine imposed a kind of de facto moratorium on executions in his state. No one has been put to death in Ohio since 2018, and since he became governor in January 2019, DeWine has postponed every scheduled execution.
He acted after a federal court compared the state’s three-drug lethal injection protocol to “a combination of waterboarding and chemical fire.” At the time, DeWine said, “Ohio is not going to execute someone under my watch when a federal judge has found it to be cruel and unusual punishment.”
He stuck to that position even after the trial court’s ruling was reversed by the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in December 2019.
In December, DeWine said he would spend the holidays thinking about capital punishment. Meantime, Ohioans waited to see what he would say about the state’s costly and unjust death penalty system.
Austin Sarat
Austin Sarat is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College. The views expressed here do not represent Amherst College.