OHIO — In a recent op-ed published in The Blade, Sister Helen Prejean, a longtime anti-death penalty advocate, expressed growing hope that Ohio may be on the verge of abolishing capital punishment.
Prejean, who has spent decades accompanying people on death row and listening to the families of both the incarcerated and their victims, wrote that the state is at a “hopeful place” where “hearts are opening and people are ready for change.”
Even Ohio’s attorney general, she noted, has admitted the system isn’t working. But for Prejean, the issue runs deeper. “It’s never just a question of whether it works. It’s a question of whether it’s right,” she wrote.
Prejean recalled being told by people across the country, “Sister, we’re ready,” suggesting a national momentum toward ending the death penalty. In Ohio, she sees that readiness growing stronger.
“I’ve seen what this system does to all of them,” Prejean wrote, describing the emotional toll on those sentenced to die, their families, and the families of their victims. Her Catholic faith, she emphasized, teaches that “justice is rooted in mercy,” and she has witnessed firsthand the possibility of redemption.
She recounted a prison warden telling her, “You know who often take on the most trusted roles in this prison? Men in prison for murder.” Her takeaway: people change and grow, but the death penalty “pretends they don’t.”
Prejean’s own transformation began the first time she set foot on death row. “What the eye doesn’t see, the heart can’t feel,” she quoted. “I saw. I felt. And it seared my soul.”
She argued that the system is deeply flawed and discriminatory. “It’s not justice that decides who lives and who dies. It’s poverty. It’s race. It’s geography. It’s politics,” she wrote. Ohio, she believes, has a strong moral compass — and that sense of fairness is driving a reckoning.
Prejean pointed to the more than 200 people exonerated from death row in the U.S., including 11 in Ohio alone, as evidence of a broken system. DNA evidence, she wrote, has “shattered the myth” of an infallible justice system.
She also noted racial disparities: Black defendants, particularly in cases involving white victims, face the death penalty at disproportionate rates. A few Ohio counties account for most of the state’s death sentences, defying the U.S. Supreme Court’s requirement that capital punishment not be arbitrary or biased.
Ohio’s own capital punishment task force, Prejean reminded readers, called the death penalty “more complex, more subject to constant change, and fraught with more mistakes” than any other area of law.
She cited trends in other states: Indiana hasn’t imposed a new death sentence in over a decade, and Pennsylvania hasn’t executed anyone in 25 years. Even Florida and Texas, once execution leaders, now top the list for exonerating wrongful convictions.
For victims’ families, Prejean wrote, the death penalty offers prolonged trauma — not healing. “We offer them a front-row seat to another killing, as though that’s healing,” she said. “But so many families I’ve listened to want something else entirely — support, counseling, financial help, and a path to move forward.”
What gives Prejean hope, she said, is that “something is shifting in Ohio.” Polls show growing support for repeal. Advocacy groups like Ohioans to Stop Executions are growing stronger and more diverse, placing truth at the center of the conversation.
“Action is a freeing thing,” she concluded. “When we begin to act, we’re no longer trapped in fear or indecision. We move. And in doing so, we become not just agents of justice — but more fully ourselves.”
For Sister Helen Prejean, the time has come. Ohio is ready.
