ABA releases mega-report criticizing Ohio’s death penalty
Continuing the extraordinary efforts of the American Bar Association’s extraordinary Death Penalty Moratorium Implementation Project, today you can now read a nearly 500-page(!) report about the application of the death penalty in Ohio. Helpfully, this webpage links all the parts of the “Ohio Death Penalty Assessment Report,” including a link to this executive summary.
The executive summary runs 40+ pages, but there is no executive summary of the executive summary. Fortunately, this fact sheet provides a two-page set of highlights with this set up: “The Ohio Death Penalty Assessment Team, working with the American Bar Association, has found that Ohio’s death penalty is plagued with serious problems. The Team recommends a number of reforms that would help to improve the fairness and accuracy of Ohio’s system. Until these reforms are implemented, Ohio should temporarily suspend executions.”
I have complained in the past that these mega-reports represent an extraordinary investment of time and energy trying to ensure that a bunch of murderers get to spend a bit more time locked in a cage before they die. My particular concern was that these very detailed reports seem unlikely to get much traction (or even be read) in states with politicians that are very committed to the death penalty. In Ohio, however, we have a governor and attorney general more than a few state legislators who have repeatedly expressed reservations about capital punishment. The Ohio reaction to this ABA report should be a good test of whether all this work by the ABA can be truly consequential.
Of course, I expect the Ohio Death Penalty Information blog to provide copious coverage of the ABA’s work and local reaction thereto.
Some prior posts (and concerns) about the ABA’s moratorium project: