DEATH PENALTY Recommendations

To improve Ohio’s death penalty system, the American Bar Association has recommended the state:

Preserve all biological evidence in cases that could involve a death sentence for as long as the defendant remains behind bars.

Require police to record, either by videotape or audiotape, all homicide interrogations.

Create a committee to review claims of innocence in capital cases as part of Ohio’s clemency system.

Increase qualifications for lawyers of capital defendants at trial and on appeal.

Determine the appropriateness of a death sentence by comparing it with all capital cases, including cases that did not result in a death sentence. Currently, this review only compares actual death sentences.

Ensure courts do a better job enforcing a rule requiring prosecutors to disclose all evidence to defense attorneys.

Require that new lawyers represent inmates after they are sentenced to death and begin appealing their sentences.

Allow inmates to use the state’s open records law to seek records as part of their appeals.

Create a database on all cases that carry the possibility of a death sentence to help prosecutors make decisions on potential charges and to help the state Supreme Court when it reviews the appropriateness of a death sentence.

Search for any disparities in the death penalty system based on race, geography and socioeconomic status.

Prohibit offenders with serious mental disorders other than mental retardation from being sentenced to death or executed. (It is already unconstitutional to execute the mentally retarded.)

Source: American Bar Association’s Death Penalty Moratorium Implementation Project for Ohio