There is very good news from Ohio – executions there have been halted by the new governor, Governor Mike DeWine! 

Initially Governor DeWine postponed the scheduled execution of Warren Keith Henness; later he stopped other scheduled executions indefinitely. The governor even sounded ambivalent about the death penalty itself:
“It is the law of the state of Ohio. I’m going to let it go at that at this point. We are seeing, clearly, some challenges that you all have reported in regard to carrying out the death penalty. I’m not going to go down that path any more today… I think there is a lot of things we know today that we have the benefit of seeing how it has played out since 1981.”

The freeze on executions has been precipitated by a federal judge’s ruling which included a damning appraisal of midazolam, the first drug in Ohio’s execution protocol. Judge Merz found that midazolam has no analgesic effect and causes the “waterboarding” effects of pulmonary edema. 

Governor DeWine has ordered a review of Ohio’s execution protocol and has declared:
“Ohio is not going to execute someone under my watch when a federal judge has found it to be cruel and unusual punishment.”

It is likely that the review and the ensuing legal challenges will take some years.

Even though Jeffrey Wogenstahl no longer has a scheduled execution date, this announcement is a relief to him. As Ohio death row exoneree Derrick Jamison remembers it, living through the executions of the other men on death row is “like a dark cloud… over the State of Ohio… horrible”.

We hope that Governor DeWine will go further and highlight the harm that the death penalty does. We hope that on his watch capital punishment in Ohio will end.