Gov. Mike DeWine (R-OH) called Tuesday for abolishing the death penalty in the Buckeye State, abandoning a position he held for decades and distancing himself from a law he helped write more than 40 years ago.
“The moral justification I had no longer exists,” DeWine told reporters during a Tuesday news conference with less than a year remaining in his final term.
“I do not believe that argument today can be successfully made, nor do I believe there’s any chance in the future the facts that I’ve cited to support that belief will change,” the 79-year-old governor said. “Therefore, I believe Ohio should abolish the death penalty.”
DeWine co-authored Ohio’s 1981 capital punishment law after the Supreme Court struck down existing death penalty statutes nationwide in 1972.
“I no longer believe the death penalty is a deterrent for murder,” he said.
The governor pointed to statistics showing how rarely death sentences are carried out in practice. Of the 337 people sentenced to death in Ohio since 1981, 56 have been executed by lethal injection, while 41 died of natural causes or suicide while awaiting execution.
Ohio resumed imposing death sentences under the 1981 law, but executions did not restart until 1999.
The average wait time on death row now exceeds 22 years, according to then-Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost’s 2025 capital punishment report. The report found that inmates are increasingly dying of natural causes or suicide before their sentences can be carried out.
DeWine argued that the system’s lengthy delays undermine its purpose while prolonging suffering for victims’ families and placing emotional strain on state employees involved in executions.
Ohio has not conducted an execution since July 18, 2018, when Robert Van Hook was put to death for the 1985 murder of a man he met at a Cincinnati bar. Since taking office in 2019, DeWine has repeatedly postponed scheduled executions, citing pharmaceutical manufacturers’ refusal to supply drugs used in lethal injections.
In 2020, DeWine acknowledged that lawmakers would likely need to adopt a different execution method before Ohio could resume carrying out death sentences. Despite efforts by state officials to secure execution drugs, the unofficial moratorium has remained in place.
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The governor’s call to abolish the death penalty faces significant political obstacles and will likely not materialize into legislation. State Republican House Speaker Matt Huffman said earlier this year that he would “vigorously oppose” any effort to repeal capital punishment. Yost, a supporter of the death penalty, publicly agreed with Huffman’s position.
It remains unclear whether Interim Attorney General Andy Wilson, who was appointed last month to complete Yost’s term, will support DeWine’s proposal.