"Justice Paul Pfeifer rethinks death penalty," is by Henry S. Conte in the Bucyrus Telegraph-Forum.
Bucyrus native Justice Paul E. Pfeifer has indicated in recent years that the death penalty statute he helped establish needs to be taken away.
"I think a little bit of it comes from personal experience, but I think it has more to do with what the Legislature has done now, which is what we were trying to do in the Senate before," Pfeifer said.
The senior associate justice of the Ohio Supreme Court was referring to the law that now allows a life sentence with no hope of parole.
"I always felt as though a life sentence without the possibility of parole was the preferred sentence," Pfeifer said. "It is a death lottery the way it is now. It depends on where you commit the offense as to whether or not the death penalty is sought.
"I know that Joe Deters (prosecutor) in Hamilton County -- his attitude is that they are all death penalty cases. It is just the luck of the draw as to where it happens."
And:
"There is a change coming, but I don't think it is going to be this year. It may be three, four or five years from now, maybe even a decade. I think we have a hard time claiming high moral ground as a nation with a straight face if we continue to have the death penalty. Most of the developed countries in the world do not have it. You can't even be in the European Union if you have it, and Canada doesn't have it."
Earlier news coverage from Ohio includes the state's ongoing lethal injection problems and the Ohio's Joint Task Force to Study Administration of the Death Penalty.
There is also additional coverage of Justice Pfeifer's call for repeal.
In 2007, an ABA assessment team issued a report detailing problems with the state's administration of capital punishment. The complete ABA Moratorium Implementation Project's Ohio Assessment report is available via the ABA.
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