Death Penalty Foes: Halt Ohio Executions
Read this Associated Press article featured in the Washington Post.
COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Opponents of the death penalty urged the state Monday to immediately stop executions, citing findings by The Associated Press that the capital punishment system has been applied unevenly since it was enacted in 1981."If we're going to be in the killing business, we need to be sure we're doing it right," said Jeffrey Gamso, legal director of the Ohio chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. "The only way to do that is to pause, hold off, do a study and find out what's really going on here."
Messages were left for Gov. Bob Taft and legislative leaders seeking comment.The AP's analysis of 1,936 capital indictments from 1981 through 2002 found that defendants were more than twice as likely to receive a death sentence for killing a white victim than for killing a black victim. Nearly half of the capital punishment cases ended with a plea bargain.
The study also found discrepancies in death sentences based on the county where the crime was committed. In Cuyahoga County, a Democratic stronghold, 8 percent of indictments resulted in death sentences, while the figure was 43 percent in conservative Hamilton County.
The AP analysis "is just one more time we see evidence that the death penalty is neither fair nor necessary," said Sister Alice Gerdeman, president of Ohioans to Stop Executions, an anti-capital punishment group founded in 1987.
The House last year approved a bill that would have required a similar study of the death penalty system, but senators refused to go along.
Posted by beth at 10:21 AM
