COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Republican Gov. Mike DeWine, who has repeatedly postponed executions over the past seven years, said Tuesday that Ohio should abolish the death penalty, confirming his change of heart on the policy he helped write as a state legislator 45 years ago.
DeWine, 79, said during a news conference that data indicates the death penalty is not serving as a deterrent to violent crime, which he had always believed was its moral imperative.
“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,” he said. “Therefore, I believe Ohio should abolish the death penalty.”
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.
He also cited years of pain brought to victims’ loved ones by the delays and the toll taken on the mental health of state employees who serve on execution teams.
DeWine, facing 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, then as Ohio's attorney general. But he said his outright opposition has only crystallized over the past year.
Divided reaction to DeWine’s position
Headed into the announcement, any chance of a legislative repeal of the death penalty appeared unlikely. Republican House Speaker Matt Huffman has said he would oppose such an effort.
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.
Interim Ohio Republican Attorney General Andy Wilson expressed relief that DeWine didn’t choose to use commutations and that his office will continue working to uphold the current law.
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, when executions have been on hold, or not.
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, which he called “well-reasoned.”
Kent Scheidegger, legal director of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, which supports the death penalty and crime victims’ rights, said DeWine may be right that Ohio’s death penalty isn’t currently serving as a deterrent.
However, "what is needed is the political will and effective leadership,” Scheidegger said.
Death penalty's future being debated nationally
The governor noted that Ohio is far from the only state where such trends exist. Use of and support for the death penalty has been on the decline nationally for two decades.
Currently, 27 states allow the death penalty and 23 do not, according to the Washington, D.C.-based Death Penalty Information Center. Ohio is among four states where executions are paused by executive action. The center reported in 2023 that more Americans now believe the death penalty is administered unfairly than fairly, a first.
Texas has executed 600 people since it resumed the death penalty in 1982. Republican state Rep. Jeff Leach, who has met with death row inmates and advocated for reforms, led a group of state lawmakers last year who successfully halted the first execution in the U.S. tied to a murder conviction for shaken baby syndrome.
Then-Illinois Gov. George Ryan, also a Republican, signed off on the execution of one killer then decided not to carry out any more. In virtually his last act as governor, he emptied death row with pardons and commutations in 2003. Numerous governors have commuted some number of death sentences or granted broad blanket clemency to condemned inmates in the years since to empty portions of their death rows.
But the nation remains divided.
Since 2019, Colorado, New Hampshire and Virginia have eliminated the death penalty, while five states have approved nitrogen gas executions since 2024 to get around issues with lethal injection protocols. Meanwhile, Trump pushes to expand federal executions. During his first term, Trump’s administration carried out 13 federal executions, more than under any president in modern history.
DeWine’s position has evolved over time
Pushing back execution dates has left Ohio with 30 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, the year before DeWine took office.
The state 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 has slowly shifted 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.
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Associated Press writer John Raby in Charleston, West Virginia, contributed.
