DEATH PENALTY
crimes that seem to cry out for that to be an appropriate sentence,” Franklin County Prosecutor Ron O’Brien said when asked about the increased number of death-penalty indictments.
O’Brien changed the way death-penalty cases are evaluated in 2005 after working on a federal death-penalty case. That also was the year that state law changed to allow a life sentence without chance of parole. Now, prosecutors assess the defendant as much as possible. A good defense attorney can use mitigating factors such as mental health to sometimes sway jurors to a lesser sentence.
“It’s hard to gauge,” O’Brien said. “We try to make a determination by putting ourselves in the seats of the jurors. Would we have a reasonable likelihood of making that judgment?”
Jurors, for example, didn’t feel that Lincoln Rutledge should die for killing Columbus Police Officer Steven Smith in 2016. Rutledge’s defense was built on his mental state leading up to the shooting during a SWAT call.
“I think that’s what won the day with jurors for a life sentence in his case,” O’Brien said.
Historically, some counties — notably
Brian Golsby is accused of abducting, raping and killing Ohio State student Reagan Tokes in February 2017. His trial began last week.
Michael Slager doused his ex-girlfriend, Judy Malinowski, with gasoline and set her on fire in August 2015. She died from her injuries in June 2017. His case is pending.
Kristopher Garrett is accused of fatally stabbing his ex-girlfriend, Nicole “Coley” Duckson, and their daughter, Christina Duckson, in January. His case is pending.
Anthony Pardon, a documented sexual predator, is accused of torturing and killing Rachael Anderson in January. His case is pending.
Hamilton County, home to Cincinnati — have had high rates of death-penalty indictments and sentences. Hamilton County is the source of the most inmates on Ohio’s death row, with 24. Cuyahoga County has 21. Franklin County has 10.
Ohio has 137 inmates awaiting execution.
“There is no evidence that murders are worse in Cincinnati than they are in Columbus or Cleveland. What’s different are the views of the prosecutors,” said Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit group based in Washington, D.C., that researches the death penalty.
Counties in which there are high conviction rates for the death penalty often have prosecutors who say their decision is based solely on the facts of the case, Dunham said.
That’s true for Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters.
“Either (the case) fits
the law, or it doesn’t. I know there (are) prosecutors who don’t like it,” Deters said of the death penalty. “There (are) judges who don’t like it. Frankly, I don’t care either way. If you want to get rid of it, get rid of it. In Ohio, we have a death-penalty statute.”
Dunham noted, however, that state laws don’t require prosecutors to seek the death penalty. They have discretion.
“It is unquestionably related to local politics,” Dunham said. “What we have seen historically” is that, “as a prosecutor becomes entrenched, challenges to him or her tend to be more difficult.”
O’Brien said his office asks the victim’s family members what they would like to see as a sentence. Prosecutors ultimately make the call, though.
“We just try and do the best we can ... with what we believe is the appropriate charge and the appropriate punishment, and factor in whether we believe a jury will impose a death sentence with the facts as we best know them,” O’Brien said.
In cities such as Houston, Birmingham, Alabama, and Jacksonville and Tampa, Florida, where prosecutors used the death penalty often, they were challenged and defeated at the polls, Dunham said. Over the years, many people have softened their views about the use of the death penalty.
It raises the question about whether a murder committed in one county would result in a different legal outcome if it had been committed in another county where the prosecutor holds a different philosophy.
“It may be the case that the prosecutorial practices in Hamilton County reflect the views of Hamilton County,” Dunham said. “That doesn’t make the outcomes any less arbitrary.”
Deters said that in Cincinnati, there are “some very bad crimes, very bad violence, hideous criminals down here,” that require the death penalty if there aren’t legal issues of proof with the cases.
“If someone is executed, they can’t kill again,” he said. “I don’t care about sending messages. I don’t care about deterrence, but we get these guys that get out, and they kill and kill again.”