Excerpts:
Support is slowly growing for the abolition of the death
penalty in the U.S. Midwestern state of Ohio, considered by rights activists as
a key state because of its historic, strong stand for the death
penalty.
"We are the state in the north that has killed the most people,"
Jeffrey Gamso, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio,
told IPS. "But there are signs that even in a state like Ohio things are on the
verge of starting to turn around."
Gamso added: "Public support for the
death penalty is down and death sentences are way down from a few years ago.
Ohio is ripe for moving towards abolition." Juries were increasingly reluctant
to agree to a prosecutor's call for a death sentence, reflecting the waning
support for the ultimate sanction from the public at large.
As an
indication of this, activists point to the swell of public opposition to the
death penalty expressed last February. The new state governor, Tom Strickland,
suspended three executions so he could review the cases. At the time, letters to
the governor against the death penalty outnumbered those supporting it
five-to-one, according to the Associated Press.
Currently 38 out of the
50 U.S. states still employ the death penalty but support in many states appears
to be waning. New Jersey, Maryland and Connecticut may abolish the death penalty
within a year or two, says David Elliot of the National Coalition to Abolish the
Death Penalty. Ohio could follow some years later, Gamso and others in Ohio say.
Ohio reinstated the death penalty in 1974 and since 1999 has executed 26
inmates, including two so far this year. It has 185 people waiting on death row,
according to the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction. It has
executed 369 people in its history.
...The waning support for the death
penalty in Ohio is explained by growing concern that innocent people may have
been put to death and new information that death by lethal injection may cause
suffering, activists say. There has also been mounting evidence of racial bias
in handing down death sentences.
Since 1999, six people on Ohio's death
row have been found to be innocent and been released from death row. This is a
major reason for increased public doubt about the death penalty, Jim Tobin, an
official with Ohioans to Stop Executions, told IPS.
Criminal defence
lawyers are also on the offensive challenging the state's lethal injection
method of execution, fighting a case-by-case struggle in the courts. They have
succeeded in recently halting most executions in Ohio on these grounds, rights
activists say.
But up to now politicians have lacked the political will
to follow the example of several other U.S. states and order a moratorium on
executions because of these concerns, Gamso and others said.
"The
governor could if he wanted to. He has absolute power to do these things. (But)
he has repeatedly said he would not," Gamso said.
Inertia has also been
shown by other state institutions. "The state legislature and the state's
supreme court could act but have so far chosen not to do so," Tobin said. "The
make-up of the state courts is also not in our favour."
Since taking up
office last January, the state's attorney general Marc Dann has failed to live
up to expectations that he might act against the death penalty. In the months
prior to his election, he said that he had significant doubts about the fairness
of Ohio's death penalty system and wanted the state to conduct an analysis of
it. He has so far failed to call for this investigation.
But three death
penalty cases in the state continue to keep the issue in the news and are
contributing to the continuing erosion of public confidence in the death
sentence. They are also putting state officials under growing pressure to take a
public stand.
The most publicised is that of Kenny Richey, on death row
for 20 years. He was convicted of the arson murder of a two-year-old child. He
was convicted on circumstantial evidence and he maintains he is innocent.
The U.S. Court of Appeals has twice ruled Richey's death sentence should
be overturned because he received inadequate legal representation at his trial.
In its devastatingly critical ruling on the conviction, the court said "the
prosecution's case depended on a cast of witnesses whose lives revolved around
drinking and partying and some of whom might have had their own motives for
implicating Richey".
On Aug. 10, the court reaffirmed its first 2005
ruling and ordered the state court to retry or release him within 90 days.
A second case that has shaken public confidence in the death penalty is
that of John Spirko, scheduled for execution in July but given a 120-day
reprieve by Governor Strickland. This was Spirko's seventh reprieve because of
doubts over his guilt. No physical evidence ties him to the crime, and charges
against a co-defendant who linked him to the murder were dropped.
"Spirko's case is another clear sign that Ohio's system does not work,"
said Sister Alice Gerdeman in a statement. Gerdeman heads Ohioans to Stop
Executions, which has gathered together a coalition of 118 organisations and
cities, including Cincinnati, Dayton and Oberlin, campaigning for a state
moratorium on executions. The coalition also wants an investigation into the
operation of the state's capital punishment system.
Public concern over
the fairness of the death penalty system has also been voiced over the case of
Jason Getsy, a convicted killer-for-hire, who was 19 years old when he committed
the crime in 1995. He was given a death sentence, while the man who orchestrated
the murder was not.
A federal court recently denied Getsy's appeal. But
six of the 14 judges dissented, saying Getsy's sentence was not fair. His case
will be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, his lawyer, Michael Benza, told IPS.
Judge Boyce Martin, delivering his dissenting judgement, said the case
showed that the death penalty was "arbitrary, biased, and so fundamentally
flawed at its very core that it is beyond repair".
Groups campaigning
against the death penalty in the state believe they will receive wide public
support when they hold a rally and lobby day at the state's legislature on Sep.
26.
The public is tiring of the "idea that we can kill our way out of
our problems", Tobin, one of the rights activists who will be present on that
day, said.
- More information on the September 26 "STAND UP for an END TO
EXECUTIONS" rally in Columbus is here.
