Ohio death penalties

After the Supreme Court’s Baze decision two weeks ago, some states weren’t wasting much time in getting their execution schedules back on track. Virginia almost immediately after the decision was made lifted its moratorium; Florida’s governor asked for “a very short list” of death warrant applications to be considered, and Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Texas indicated they would be seeking execution dates for inmates.

Baze may help Nebraska figure out what they’re going to do for executions since their Supreme Court in February ruled that electrocution, that state’s only means of execution, was unconstitutional. (Nebraska ruling)

But Ohio’s not keeping up with the same pace of things, according to reports from Ohio.com and elsewhere. The state, “which not long ago had one of the nation’s busiest death chambers, is led by a governor who has said he’s not comfortable with the death penalty, and top law enforcement officer who says he thinks ‘we can do better’ in applying it.” (Article)

On the occasion of the Baze decision, Ted Strickland had made the statement that he been able to determine the legal ramifications of it as yet, or how it applied to this state, which has a similar, though not identical, lethal injection procedure to Kentucky’s. “You’d think that because the methodology is quite similar that the legal outcome would be similar as well,” he said. “But I don’t want to just make that assumption without having a little deeper understanding about what was said there.”