More media coverage of ABA Ohio Death Penalty Assessment Report released today:  Jeff Coryell has this post on the Cleveland Plain Dealer's Wide Open blog, entitled "ABA Death Penalty Assessment Team Calls for Suspension of Executions in Ohio."   Tribune News Service legal reporter James Oliphant has this article carried in several news outlets, entitled "ABA calls on Ohio to halt executions."  Andrew Welsh-Huggins has this early AP coverage of today's report, entitled "Bar association calls for Ohio to suspend death penalty system."  Jim Provance has this coverage on the Toledo Blade website, entitled "American Bar Association calls for Ohio to cease executions until it fixes problems."

Coryell excerpt:
...The chair of the Ohio Death Penalty Assessment Team is Phyllis Crocker, an associate dean and professor at Cleveland-Marshall College of Law. She is also my wife. I have observed the process as she painstakingly assembled the researchers, overcame numerous obstacles to obtaining the necessary information, reviewed drafts of chapters of the report as prepared by members of the team, and finally assembled the information into an amazingly comprensive and detailed analysis of capital punishment in Ohio. It contains data that has never been publicized before. And the overwhelming conclusion one draws from the report is that the death penalty is not being applied fairly or accurately (or in conformity with the constitutional requirement of due process) in this state. ...

 

Updates: 

• The ABA Office of Media Relations and Communications has issued this press release, entitled "Statewide Expert Legal Panel Calls for Temporary Halt to Executions in Ohio; Study uncovers systemic problems with death penalty cases."
• The Toledo Blade has this updated coverage featuring a response by Ohio Prosecuting Attorneys Assn. spokesman John Murphy, who calls the report a "a hatchet job on our death penalty statutes, totally unjustified...”
• Paul Kostyu has this article for GateHouse Media, entitled "Panel:  Moratorium sought on Ohio death penalty cases."
• WLWT-TV in Cincinnati has this report, entitled "Hamilton Co. More Likely to Give Death Sentence."
• The ACLU of Ohio issued this press statement, entitled "Ohio Must Halt Executions: Findings in American Bar Association Study Show Death Penalty Unfair, Arbitrary."
• Andrew Welsh-Huggins has this expanded AP coverage, entitled "Bar association calls for Ohio to suspend death penalty system," with various responses to the report - and noting that Governor Strickland is already reviewing it, according to Strickland press secretary Keith Dailey.
• The ABA issued an audio press release on the report (featuring an actuality of former ABA president MIchael Greco) here (0:57).