- “Are we done with death in Ohio? We should be.” – Paul Pfeifer, principal author of the 1981 death penalty statute and later an Ohio Supreme Court justice
By Vanguard Staff
COLUMBUS, Ohio — On the 44th anniversary of Ohio’s death penalty law taking effect, twenty-seven members of the 114th General Assembly—the same legislature that reinstated the death penalty in 1981—have joined the growing movement to abolish capital punishment in the state.
On Friday, the former lawmakers sent a letter to the Ohio Senate Judiciary Committee in support of Senate Bill 133, which seeks to repeal Ohio’s death penalty. Hearings on the bill have not yet begun.
The letter, addressed to the committee chaired by Senator Nathan Manning, states that “we understand this broken death penalty system’s grievous flaws, its unintended consequences, and its failure to achieve the benefits we had intended.”
The signatories—who describe themselves as the “architects” of Ohio’s capital punishment system—include former legislators who supported, debated, and enacted Senate Bill 1 in 1981. The original law passed 67–31 in the House and 23–10 in the Senate after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Ohio’s 1974-era death penalty as unconstitutional.
The letter cites concerns over racial and geographic disparities, wrongful convictions, and the financial burden of capital punishment. It notes that public funds “could be better spent supporting victims’ families and preventing crime.”
Sean McCann, policy strategist for the ACLU of Ohio, said, “When those responsible for our current capital punishment system say it must go, our state lawmakers must listen. Ohio’s death penalty is administered arbitrarily and unfairly, fails to deter crime and puts innocent lives at risk. The ACLU of Ohio has advocated for abolition since 1981, and we could not agree more with these ‘architects’ that the system is broken beyond repair.”
Marge Koosed, professor emerita at the University of Akron School of Law, conducted interviews with 44 of the 57 surviving legislators who voted on the 1981 law. “Only 5 of them expressed continued support for the current death penalty system,” Koosed said. “The rest now believe ending the death penalty is appropriate, and everyone I interviewed agrees it is not working as they expected.”
Koosed’s research builds on the public advocacy of several prominent Ohio figures, including former Governor Bob Taft and former Attorneys General Jim Petro and Lee Fisher. In a 2021 Columbus Dispatch op-ed, they wrote that Ohio’s death penalty was “broken, costly, and unjust.”
Paul Pfeifer, the principal author of the 1981 death penalty statute and later an Ohio Supreme Court justice, has also called for its repeal. In a 2011 Cleveland Plain Dealer column, Pfeifer wrote, “Are we done with death in Ohio? We should be. The statute which we believed in 1981 was carefully crafted, limited in reach, and targeting just the ‘worst of the worst,’ has fallen far short in so many ways.” He later described the system as a “death lottery that should be abandoned.”
In 2011, Pfeifer said, “So I ask, do we want our state government—and thus by extension, all of us—to be in the business of taking lives in what amounts to a death lottery? I can’t imagine that’s something about which most of us feel comfortable. And, thus, I believe the time has come to abolish the death penalty in Ohio.”
Kevin Werner, executive director of Ohioans to Stop Executions, said, “We know so much more today than lawmakers knew 44 years ago. And now that we know better, we need to do better and repeal the death penalty.”
While former Governor Bob Taft and former Justice Pfeifer did not sign the new letter due to current professional roles, both have publicly urged repeal. The surviving signatories said they are united across party lines in calling on the 136th General Assembly to “enact Senate Bill 133 and repeal the death penalty law that we of the 114th General Assembly wrote, making life imprisonment without parole Ohio’s most severe penalty.”
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