Innocence
Ohio's death penalty risks executing innocent people. Since 1976, Ohio has had six death row exonerations. Nationally, 140 people in 26 states have been released after being wrongfully convicted and sentenced to die. Hundreds more have been exonerated from long prison terms after being convicted of rapes and murders they did not commit.
Most of these exonerations came as a result of the extraordinary effort of those outside the criminal justice system, including law and journalism students, non-profit organizations, family members, and concerned citizens. In other words, each exoneration represents a significant failure of our nation’s normal channels of justice.
Death row exonerees spend an average of nine and a half years behind bars before the truth of their innocence comes to light and their freedom is won.
The most recent death row exoneration from Ohio took place on January 23, 2012, when Joe D'Ambrosio was exonerated after spending nearly 22 years on death row. Ohio death row exonerees spent a combined 102 years on death row for crimes they did not commit.
Studying Innocence
A 2005 study by the University of Cincinnati Law School found that 75 of the 173 Ohio death penalty cases they examined relied at least partly on jailhouse informants, accomplices, and/or eyewitnesses – all factors identified by legal experts as leading to wrongful convictions.
When practices that lead to wrongful convictions are allowed to continue unchecked, not only do innocent people risk execution, but the true perpetrators remain on the streets, free to commit more crimes that might have been prevented.
The role of DNA
DNA is a powerful new development that has aided in many of the nation’s exonerations in recent years. Not only has DNA testing proven innocence in individual cases, but it has also provided a window into all of the other things that can go wrong in the death penalty system.
- DNA has revealed the widespread existence of prosecutoral misconduct, the limits of eyewitness identification, the unreliability of jailhouse snitches, shoddy forensics – all problems evident in Ohio’s five death row exonerations..
- Of the 138 death row exonerations nationally, only 16 involved DNA.
- DNA is only as reliable as the human beings conducting the testing. Crime lab scandals in states like Texas, Washington, Maryland, and Oklahoma have revealed that even DNA test results can be tainted, tampered with, or botched.
Ohio Aims to Reduce Wrongful Convictions
In May 2010 then-Ohio Governor Ted Strickland signed S.B. 77 into law. This new piece of legislation ensures protections and puts in place some safeguards to address widespread wrongful convictions in Ohio. Although the new law should help prevent wrongful convictions in the future, it does not provide those guarantees retroactively to those already convicted.
Dale Johnston, one of five men exonerated from death row in Ohio, said, "I know firsthand the horror of being an innocent person facing execution. Before being exonerated in 1990, I spent more than five years on Ohio's death row for murders I did not commit. But not all mistakes are caught in time. If this law (SB 77) had been in place (in 1982) I would never have been wrongfully convicted of my daughter's murder.
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