Study: Ohio county leads country in recent death sentences

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — The five death sentences handed down the past two years in the Ohio county that is home to Cleveland surpassed any other county in the U.S., according to a new report from an anti-death penalty organization.

Judges sentenced five inmates to death in Cuyahoga County—three this year and two in 2018—surpassing two California counties and one Arizona county, which each had two over the same two-year time period, according to the Washington, D.C.-based Death Penalty Information Center.

A seven-year look at death sentences nationally finds Southern California’s Riverside County with the most new death sentences, at 25, followed by Los Angeles County with 21, according to the center’s annual report released Tuesday. By that measure, Cuyahoga County falls to ninth on the list with six death sentences from 2013 through this year.

Due to various legal challenges and court decisions, California has not actually executed anyone in years, and earlier this year Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a moratorium on executions for as long as he is in office.

Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Michael O’Malley said the figure is appropriate given the number of violent offenses in the county since he took office in 2017, including the abduction, torture, rape and killing of 14-year-old Alianna DeFreeze. Her killer, Christopher Whitaker, was sentenced to death last year. The community has shown it wants the option of capital punishment in the worst cases, O’Malley told cleveland.com.

“I think if we did not present that case – Whitaker -- as a capital case, I feel the jury would think I was not doing my job,” O’Malley said.

Whether those Ohio inmates will ever be executed is another question. Ohio is experiencing a de facto moratorium on executions because of a lack of lethal drugs, and Gov. Mike DeWine has said he doesn’t expect the situation to change any time soon. Death sentences are also subject to multiple appeals, meaning an execution is likely decades off even if a new supply of lethal drugs were acquired tomorrow.

Also Tuesday, a federal appeals court reaffirmed its conclusion from September that Ohio’s previous three-drug execution method didn’t pose an unconstitutional risk of severe pain and suffering.

Attorneys for death row inmate Keith Henness argued that the first drug, the sedative midazolam, wouldn’t render inmates deeply unconscious enough to avoid pain from the second two drugs. Instead, an inmate would experience sensations of drowning and suffocation, they argued.

Although a lower-court judge ruled in favor of the arguments by Henness and other Ohio death row inmates, the appeals court rejected that argument in September and again Tuesday. A three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals noted that death by hanging could lead to painful deaths but was never found unconstitutional as an execution method.

“All of this puts Henness’s claims about risks of pain in context,” the court said Tuesday. “Yes, he points to the risks of chest tightness and chest pain. But that pales in comparison to the pain associated with hanging.”

Henness’ attorneys said they were still reviewing Tuesday’s ruling.