Death Penalty

Staughton and Alice Lynd have been married for 60 years, and have been prominent activists for nearly as long. They are also longtime friends and partners of the ACLU of Ohio.

The Lynds moved to Ohio in 1976 and were profoundly affected by the 1993 Lucasville prison uprising and its aftermath. Staughton Lynd served as ACLU cooperating council in the appeals of Siddique Abdullah Hasan, who was sentenced to death for allegedly killing a corrections officer during the uprising. Lynd argued that prosecutors presented false evidence in Hasan’s case. In 2007, the ACLU presented a statewide tour of Staughton Lynd’s play on the subject, entitled Lucasville: The Untold Story of a Prison Uprising.

The Lynds also served as ACLU cooperating attorneys in 2001, assisting in a successful class action lawsuit that challenged the constitutionality of conditions in the then-new “super-max” prison facility in Youngstown.

The State of Ohio will not appeal a judge’s decision to stay the execution of Kenneth Smith, who was scheduled to be executed on July 19, 2011. In the decision, U.S. Court Judge Gregory Frost noted, “Ohio pays lip service to standards it then often ignores without valid reasons, sometimes with no physical ramifications and sometimes with what have been described as messy if not botched executions.”

As a result of the stay, Governor Kasich granted reprieve to two other people, but then resumed executions in November 2011.

However, in early 2012 Judge Frost once again stopped the executions of Charles Lorraine and Michael Webb because of the states execution protocols.

The state is appealing the decision, and also creating updated policies.

This is not the first time Ohio’s haphazard execution protocols have been challenged. In 2008, the ACLU of Ohio won a judgment in Lorain County Common Pleas Court in the case of State of Ohio v. Rivera. The Court ruled that the state’s lethal injection protocols violated state law that executions should be ‘quick and painless.’ Read the execution protocols from the case here.

Ohio’s executions have been plagued by problems that even those who had supported the death penalty recognize. Ohio Supreme Court Justice Paul Pfeifer, the architect of Ohio’s current death penalty statute, has called for an end to the death penalty in Ohio, as has former Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction Director Terry Collins.

As the 2011 Ohio legislative session came to an end, Pfeifer stood before lawmakers and predicted that it is only a matter of time before the death-penalty legislation he helped write 30 years ago is abolished. He gave testimony on behalf of HB 160, a bill which would abolish the death penalty in Ohio and explained how he turned away from the death penalty after seeing how the location of crimes and the attitudes of prosecutors turn the system into a “death lottery.” The ACLU of Ohio also offered testimony in support of House Bill 160.

As lawmakers heard testimony on the fundamental injustice of the death penalty, The Dayton Daily News reported that Ohio currently holds the nation’s third highest execution rate, despite a six month hiatus and the fact that U.S. courts issued fewer death sentences this year than they have since capital punishment was reinstated in 1976.

A 2011 Death Penalty Information Center Report highlights that factors unrelated to the crime are better predictors of who will be put to death than the crime itself. Quality of legal representation, the prosecutor’s decision to pursue capital sentencing, and the victim’s race all affect who is put to death and who is not.

Call Governor Kasich to stop executions now!

On August 25, 2011, the U. S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals voted 2-1 to reverse the decision of the U. S. District Court in the case of Kelly Foust.

The court vacated Foust’s death sentence, and ordered a new sentencing hearing.

Judge Karen Nelson Moore explained in the court’s opinion that Foust’s trial lawyers’ near total failure to gather records and investigate the horrific circumstances of Foust’s life effectively deprived the trial court of the information it needed for a fair sentencing proceeding.

Even granting the “double deference” federal courts are required to afford the decisions of state courts in these matters, the decision of the Ohio courts denying Foust a new sentencing was not only wrong, it was unreasonably wrong and violated his constitutional rights.

On April 4, 2011, Attorney General Mike DeWine released the state’s annual report on death row and capital punishment statistics.

Nearly one execution each month is scheduled between now and September 2013. For a complete listing, click here.

The ACLU of Ohio has litigated on behalf of a number of death row inmates. For more information about our cases, please visit our legal docket.

Learn more about the death penalty at the ACLU national website.