Strickland cautious on resuming executions

Photo

Ohio Governor Ted Strickland (D-Lisbon)

The U.S. Supreme Court has allowed Kentucky’s process, which is similar to Ohio’s.

COLUMBUS (AP) — Ohio officials have been less swift and less aggressive than leaders from some other states at moving to restart executions after a U.S. Supreme Court decision ended a seven-month national pause to killing inmates.

Ohio, which not long ago had one of the nation’s busiest death chambers, is led by a governor who has said he is not comfortable with the death penalty and top law enforcement officer who has said he thinks “we can do better” in applying it.

Gov. Ted Strickland has the power to cancel or delay death sentences, and Attorney General Marc Dann’s office fights against death row inmates’ appeals.

Since the U.S. Supreme Court decided April 16 to allow Kentucky’s lethal injection process that is similar to the one used in Ohio, Texas and a few other states have already scheduled executions. In Mississippi, the attorney general has petitioned the state’s high court to set a date for one inmate. And governors in states such as Florida have said the execution process should now resume.

Ohio has not set any execution dates yet, and top officials have made no public requests for quick action.

The speed at which Ohio’s death-penalty cases move forward depends on how quickly and forcefully Ohio officials respond, said Doug Berman, a law professor at Ohio State University.

Strickland’s lawyers are still reviewing the federal court decision. And unlike some governors, Strickland has not made a definitive public statement about what he believes the case means. Ohio’s lethal injection procedure still is being challenged in a lawsuit.

After the Supreme Court decision came out, this is what Strickland said about applying it to Ohio: “You would just think that because the methodology is quite similar that the legal outcome would be similar as well. But I just don’t want to make that assumption without having a little deeper understanding about what they said.”

Contrast that with what Charlie Crist, the Republican governor of Florida, said when praising the court’s ruling: “Justice delayed is justice denied, and an awful lot of families of the victims have been waiting for justice to be done, and so that’s certainly an important factor.” Crist said he asked his lawyers to provide him with death warrants to consider signing, after which execution dates would follow.

Ohio has 184 inmates on death row, many of them exhausting their final appeals. Three death-row inmates are likely to be among the first set for execution: Clarence Carter, Kenneth Biros and Richard Cooey, who lost what may be his final appeal last week.

Only Texas had more executions in 2006 and 2007 combined than Ohio, which tied with Oklahoma at seven. Ohio has executed 26 inmates since it resumed executions in 1999.

Strickland, a Democrat, has allowed two of three executions since he became governor in 2007, but he has yet to face the volume of capital punishment cases that landed on the desk of his Republican predecessor.

A few months after he started as governor, Strickland talked about his concerns about the death penalty with The Associated Press.

“I’m not comfortable with it,” he said in March 2007. “I hope never to be comfortable with it. But it is the law and I have assumed this responsibility as governor.”

Strickland’s legal staff is reviewing information on death-penalty cases that will begin moving forward so he is ready for the clemency process.

The Ohio Supreme Court sets execution dates after evaluating motions that usually come from the attorney general’s office or in some cases, large counties. No motions requesting to move forward with an execution have been submitted.

Dann, a Democrat, said in 2006 before he became attorney general that he’d be open to a study on how the death penalty is applied.

“I think we can do better,” he said. “We need to make sure it’s being applied fairly across all racial and socioeconomic groups.”

Dann has not made any public statements about what the Supreme Court decision means for Ohio. But the attorney general said he thinks the ruling buoyed Ohio’s lethal injection procedure — which, like Kentucky’s, uses a three-drug regimen to sedate, paralyze and kill.

Dann’s office is trying to coordinate with county prosecutors on cases that will begin moving forward, preparing to help them with any legal arguments that come from the other side, said Zach Swisher, chief of the criminal division in Dann’s office.

“Because the process used in Kentucky is substantially similar to that in Ohio, we’re looking at it that it’s likely the process in Ohio will also be found constitutional,” Swisher said.