This week, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, announced that he supports abolishing the death penalty in his state because it is no longer an effective deterrent against murder.

DeWine has gained a reputation as a RINO across both Trump administrations, so he will naturally be attacked for his position on a penalty that is supported by Republicans and condemned by Democrats, but it’s not that easy.

Keep in mind, more than four decades ago, DeWine helped author Ohio’s death penalty law while working in the state legislature. Yet, as governor, he has delayed enforcing the punishment just about every time an execution was scheduled to be performed.

I am on record many times supporting the death penalty, but I have also been very critical of it for the time it often takes to be carried out. Oftentimes, several decades have passed. By the time the sentence is carried out, nobody even remembers the crime that put the criminal on death row in the first place.

It’s not the penalty that is the issue here, but rather the time in which it takes to carry out the sentence. When 30 or more years pass, the sentence gets nothing more than a shrug of the shoulders by those who face it.

The Data

DeWine is basing his logic on hard data, some of which he has contributed during his time as governor. For instance, the last 10 people who were executed in Ohio were on death row for at least 14 years, with some having been there for more than three decades.

Since the law was reinstated in 1981, the law that DeWine helped pen, there have been 56 people executed. Nearly as many, 41, have died from natural causes or suicide while residing on death row. Another 89 sentences were overturned via judicial action, such as legal errors made during the trials.

So, since that time, more people have died by other means or have had their sentences overturned than have been executed. The last execution that took place in Ohio was on July 18, 2018, almost eight years ago.

When we branch out nationally, the numbers are even worse. In 2021, the average time between sentencing and execution was 19.4 years, according to Prison Fellowship. Compare that to 1990, when the average time from sentencing to execution was 7.9 years. That is still far too long for my liking, but you can see the trend and where this is going in the future.

If the sentence takes two decades to carry out, DeWine is right; it is not a deterrent at all.

I do want to note that DeWine is not alone on the Republican side of the aisle, or even in Ohio, on wanting to abolish the death penalty. Former Republican Ohio Governor Bob Taft is backing his position.

Taft, who oversaw 24 executions from 1999 to 2007, stated:

“As a former governor, I know what it’s like to contend with this issue, and I support his decision. The Legislature taking up the issue and passing repeal this year is in the best interest of the people of Ohio.”

He, like DeWine, is taking the easy way out. We need a strong deterrent against people who are calculating to commit murder. But the problem seems to be that reform is far harder, and today’s politicians are more interested in social media profiles than they are in doing the jobs they were elected to do.

The Supreme Court has also been taking up more death row cases, such as the Skinner, Gutierrez, and Whitton cases.

For example, in Whitton v. Dixon, the court ruled that the 11^th Circuit Court of Appeals erred in its ruling because its decision included post-trial DNA evidence that the jury had never seen. Therefore, it had no place in the court’s decision-making process.

Justices Thomas and Alito dissented, arguing that Whitton's claim would have failed regardless, making the decision to vacate inappropriate. But stating that the effort would have failed is a rather large assumption that is simply not how our justice system is meant to work.

The majority was correct here, in my opinion. If new evidence was going to be introduced, then a new trial should have been granted. But the fact is that the real error here came via the 11^th Circuit Court, as its decision never should have addressed the post-trial evidence, as it was not relevant to the previous decision.

DNA Should Make It Quicker, Not Longer

Based on previous DNA testing and how many cases were forced through by aggressive prosecutors, I understand the caution in carrying out the sentence. I firmly agree that we have to be 100% positive before strapping anyone into that chair.

But that was then. Times have clearly changed; prosecutors are more careful simply due to the media and social media. But the biggest change is in DNA evidence processing.

Modern forensic testing establishes guilt to a degree of certainty that simply was not available 30 years ago, where DNA is concerned. Today, in most murder cases, the DNA evidence links the alleged killer to the crime beyond a reasonable doubt. The problem, however, is that DNA evidence is available in less than 25% of the cases tried, according to Innocence Project.

The key to making the death penalty a deterrent is in making sure these DNA cases are carried out swiftly after conviction. There is no need to drag out the appellate process when the scientific evidence is available and confirms guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. If that is the case, compress the appeals process so as not to stretch the case out for decades, when DNA evidence is confirmed within weeks, if not sooner.

We still need to ensure due process, but a timeline of five to seven years is very reasonable once the sentence has been issued. The appeals process should be easily able to play out within that timeframe.

That would give the family closure so they could move forward, and the crime would still be somewhat fresh in the minds of the American people to serve as a deterrent. But a nearly two-decade average makes this penalty useless in terms of a deterrent.

What DeWine Got Wrong

The Ohio governor claims the death penalty is no longer a deterrent, citing the data, claiming it should be abolished, but the conclusion does not actually follow the data being cited.

The data shows me that the deterrent factor is lost because of the time from sentencing to execution. It does not show that if carried out within a reasonable time, it would not serve as a deterrent. If we reform the appeals process for DNA cases, DeWine’s theory of the death penalty being a deterrent would be truly tested for the first time in decades.

This is why DeWine gets slapped with the RINO label. Rather than address the core issue, he is blaming the system that he helped create to abolish the law he helped write.

Instead of caving to the left, he should be doing his job to ensure swift and appropriate justice that will allow closure for grieving family members.

To put it bluntly, he is taking the easy way out.

Nobody here is arguing that the system is not broken, but that is the fault of legislators who refuse to fix the problems they are creating.

This can still be a deterrent if we allow the legal system not to be used as a tool for criminals to delay their deserved punishment. I don’t care what the case is; with the forensic capabilities we have available to us today, five to seven years from the time of the conviction is more than enough time to bring a case to its conclusion, especially in DNA cases.

Fix the system. Do your job. And stop making excuses.