The Ohio General Assembly should pass a bipartisan bill forbidding Ohio to give a death sentence to someone convicted of aggravated murder – but also found to have a serious mental illness
American courts long have held that the death penalty is unjust for people who weren’t adults or were developmentally disabled when they committed their crimes. Execution is no fairer for people who commit crimes while they are severely mentally ill.
The time has come to advance this sensible legislation, out of committee, to the floor and then the Senate.
A report released today by Harvard Law School’s Fair Punishment Project states that at least six (or 23%) of the 26 men in Ohio scheduled to be executed over the next three and half years suffer from a mental illness. However, only two of the individuals highlighted in the report (8%) meet the narrow definition […]
When I ran for governor in 1998, I hadn’t given a great deal of thought to the duty I would be assuming to review clemency requests in death penalty cases. I campaigned on education, job creation and environmental issues. – Former Ohio Governor Bob Taft Read the full story at Cleveland.com
“As Ohio attorney general, I oversaw 18 executions in accordance with Ohio law. As a state legislator before that, I helped write Ohio’s current death-penalty law. We thought maybe it would be a deterrent. Maybe the death penalty would provide cost savings to Ohio. What I know now is that we were wrong. What I am coming to understand is just how wrong we were, and what needs to be done to fix our mistake.”
Retired Ohio Supreme Court Justice Evelyn Lundberg Stratton will be the first recipient of The Terry J. Collins Award on April 12 at an event at the Statehouse. The award recognizes a leader in government who once supported and/or implemented the death penalty.
The Ohio Alliance for the Mental Illness Exemption (OAMIE) was represented before the Senate Criminal Justice Committee in testimony today by former Ohio Senator Bob Spada, who serves on the board of directors of the National Alliance on Mental Illness of Ohio, a convener of the Alliance.
SB 162 was heard by the Ohio Senate Criminal Justice Committee on Oct. 21. Despite being a controversial issue, no testimony from opposition groups, namely the Ohio Prosecutor’s Association, was either heard or submitted, according to Betsy Johnson, associate executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness of Ohio.
Under Senate Bill 162, the death penalty could not be imposed on a murderer with an illness such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder that “significantly impaired” his or her ability to exercise rational judgment, follow the law, or appreciate the nature of their crime.
