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The state’s outgoing top cop is again urging Ohio to resume executions, even though it is highly unlikely before the end of his term or Gov. Mike DeWine’s.
Ohio’s death row wait time now stretches longer than 22 years, with more and more inmates dying from natural causes—or by suicide—than from a sentence, according to Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost’s mandatory 2025 capital punishment report. The state ranks 12th of 28 states for its wait time.
“During my years as attorney general, not a single sentence has been carried out—a mockery of the justice system and of the dead and their families,” Yost writes in the report, released Wednesday. “Yet other states, which get their life-ending drugs from the same companies Ohio could, have found the will and a way to carry out these sentences since 2019.”
The de facto execution moratorium is closing in on eight years and extending the entirety of Gov. Mike DeWine’s tenure. DeWine has delayed every scheduled one since January 2019, some more than once, blaming pharmaceutical companies’ opposition to use of their products in the drug concoction that creates a lethal injection.
But with his time in office closing, DeWine has for months hinted at coming out against capital punishment altogether. That announcement hasn’t come yet.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio, which opposes capital punishment, has asked DeWine to grant some death row inmates clemency.
“There is a real opportunity to address Ohio’s broken capital punishment system by reviewing individual cases and commuting sentences before it’s too late,” ACLU of Ohio Chief Policy and Advocacy Officer Jocelyn Rosnick wrote in an email statement.
More than 100 men and one woman are incarcerated on death row in Ohio, according to Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections data.
