"Executions are coming too fast, Ohio Public Defender Tim Young says," is Reginald Fields' report at today's Cleveland Plain Dealer. Here's an extended excerpt:
The state of Ohio is lining up death-row inmates for execution at a feverish pace not seen here since capital punishment was reinstated a decade ago.
Having already carried out three executions since June, the state has scheduled at least one lethal injection every month through the end of the year.
That could mean that by year's end, Ohio will have executed eight men in the final seven months of 2009. The previous high was seven in all of 2004.
They are coming too fast, argues Ohio Public Defender Tim Young, who worries that the burdens on state officials to carry out the tasks in rapid-fire succession could lead to careless mistakes.
"This should never become ordinary, it should never become run-of-the-mill, it should never be a normal happening like the turning of a calendar page," Young said.
"There is an incredible amount of work that goes into one of these cases, and to ask people to do it faster than it is normally done is unacceptable," he said. "Shortcuts are going to happen."
But there could have been more this year if not for a decision by Ohio Chief Justice Thomas Moyer, who heeded a request from the state prison system and public defender's office to not schedule executions within days of each other.
Moyer, who sets the dates, did just that in July, when the sentences of John Fautenberry and Marvallous Keene were carried out within a week of each other. Young complained.
While none of the upcoming executions are scheduled that close together, the pace isn't letting up. Ohio has executions planned for January and February, and at least two more inmates are awaiting their dreaded dates -- likely to come in March and April.
While county prosecutors request execution dates for death-row inmates, it is the Ohio attorney general's office that typically has to step in to see that the punishment is carried out, and the office often acts as an advocate for victims' families.
Attorney General Richard Cordray said he couldn't help but notice the stepped-up rate of executions and the burden that could pose on the system and families. But his office is prepared, he said.
"We can handle whatever they do with us," Cordray said.
So many condemned inmates are coming up at once because of a backlog of cases resulting from a pair of U.S. Supreme Court cases since 2007 that separately led to de facto moratoriums on lethal injections across the country.
Also, Ohio's death row -- with 168 men and one woman -- is chock full of inmates who were sentenced in the 1980s and early 1990s, before life without parole was a sentencing option. Many are now running out of appeal options.
Comments