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Ohio Governor
Mike DeWine (pictured) told reporters it is “pretty clear” that the state will not execute anyone in 2021.
In a December 8, 2020 year-end interview with Associated Press, DeWine said the state has an “unofficial moratorium” on the death penalty as a result of its inability to procure lethal injection execution drugs and that legislators would have to choose a different method of putting prisoners to death before executions resume in the future. Ohio has not conducted an execution since July 2018, and DeWine said he did not think the legislature would consider switching execution methods to be a priority.
DeWine’s announcement is the latest in a long series of death-penalty related developments in Ohio in 2019 and 2020. In January 2019, federal magistrate Judge Michael Merz, likening the state’s execution process to a combination of waterboarding, suffocation, and exposure to chemical fire, issued an opinion saying that executions under Ohio’s current