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Home News Ohio DP history CAPITAL PUNISHMENT IN OHIO CAPITAL PUNISHMENT IN OHIO
Wednesday, 26 July 2006
Capital punishment has been a part of Ohio’s justice system since early in the state’s history. From 1803, when Ohio became a state, until 1885, executions were carried out by public hanging in the county where the crime was committed. In 1885, the legislature enacted a law that required executions to be carried out at the Ohio Penitentiary in Columbus. The first person to be executed at the Ohio Penitentiary was Valentine Wagner, age 56. Wagner, from Morrow County, was hanged for the murder of Daniel Shehan from Mt. Gilead. Twenty-eight convicted murderers were hanged at the penitentiary
In 1897, the electric chair,
considered to be a more technologically advanced and humane form of execution,
replaced the gallows. The first prisoner to be executed by electrocution was
William Haas, a 17-year-old boy from Hamilton County, for the murder of Mrs. William Brady. The last person to be executed
by electrocution in Ohio was Donald Reinbolt, a 29-year-old inmate from Franklin County, for the murder of Edgar L. Weaver, a Columbus grocer. He was executed on March 15, 1963. From 1897 to 1963 there were 315 persons put to
death in the electric chair including three women.
In 1972, the United States Supreme Court declared the death penalty to be
unconstitutional. The decision reduced the death sentences of 65 Ohio inmates to life in prison. Also in 1972, Death Row
was moved to the newly opened Southern Ohio Correctional Facility (SOCF) at
Lucasville.
In 1974, the Ohio General Assembly revised Ohio’s Death Penalty law, but the Ohio Supreme Court
rejected the new law in 1978. As a result, 120 condemned prisoners, including
four women, had their sentences commuted to life in prison.
After drafting a new law to reflect the strict criteria for the imposition of
the death sentence, Ohio lawmakers enacted the current capital punishment
statute, which took effect October 19, 1981. Leonard Jenkins of Cuyahoga County was the first to be sentenced under the current law. His sentence and
the sentences of three other men and four women were later commuted to life by
then Governor Richard Celeste during the last days of his tenure as governor in
January 1991.
The Franklin
County Common Pleas Court found seven of the eight clemencies to have been
improperly imposed (including Jenkins’) and reinstated the death penalty of
those inmates. They were returned to death row on February 14, 1992. One woman’s commutation, Beatrice Lampkin, was
found to have been properly processed and was not challenged in the suit filed
by the Ohio Attorney General. The 1992 decision was overturned early in 1997,
and those seven clemencies have been subsequently reinstated.
In 1993, a bill granting prisoners the option to choose between death by
electrocution or lethal injection was passed and signed into law by former
Governor George V. Voinovich. The Death Row inmate would be asked to choose
between the two methods seven days before the scheduled execution. The law
stipulated that if the prisoner did not choose, the default method of execution
would be death by electrocution.
In 1995 Death Row was relocated to the Mansfield Correctional Institution in Mansfield, Ohio. The "Death House" remains at the Southern
Ohio Correctional Facility. On June 26, 2003, inmate Donna Roberts became the first female on Ohio's death row since 1991 when then-Governor Celeste
commuted the sentences of four women on Death Row to life in prison. All
executions, whether male or female, take place at the Southern Ohio
Correctional Facility.
On February 19, 1999,
inmate Wilford Berry, "The Volunteer", became the first inmate
to be executed in Ohio since 1963. He voluntarily waived all of his appeals
and selected lethal injection as the method of execution. To date, there have
been five inmate "volunteers" executed in the state of Ohio. Berry was serving a death sentence out of Cuyahoga County for the 1989 murder of Charles Mitroff.
On August 21, 2001, DRC
changed the time of scheduled executions from 9:00 p.m. to 10:00 a.m. The change was implemented to take advantage of business hour resources
as well as to reduce costs.
On November 15, 2001,
Governor Bob Taft signed House Bill 362 eliminating the electric chair as a
form of execution. The only method of execution in Ohio is lethal injection.
On February 26, 2002, Ohio’s electric chair, nicknamed "Old Sparky,"
was decommissioned and disconnected from service. The original electric chair
was donated to the Ohio Historical Society on December 18, 2002, and a replica electric chair was donated to the
Mansfield Reformatory Preservation Society.
On June 26, 2003,
Governor Bob Taft commuted the sentence of inmate Jerome Campbell to life in
prison without the possibility of parole. This was the first time that Governor
Taft has exercised his right to grant executive clemency.
There are a total of 196 inmates on Death Row in Ohio. Currently there are 194 men (97 Black, 89 White, 4
Hispanic, and 4 other) and 2 white females on Death Row. To date, Ohio has executed a total of 366 convicted murderers.