Anthony Ray Hinton spent 30 years on death row for a crime he didn’t commit. He was convicted on two counts of capital murder based only on a faulty ballistics report. He had a proven alibi for the original crime he was arrested for. The arresting officer told him it didn’t matter if he did it or not, he would be convicted, and he was. In 2015 he was finally exonerated and released from an Alabama prison after the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously forced a retrial. Three ballistics experts had proven the bullets didn’t match.
Last week I had the honor of hearing Mr. Hinton speak at the YWCA Stand Against Racism Conference held in Toledo. Rather than being bitter and hateful, Mr. Hinton has forgiven and is an advocate of prison reform. As I listened to his story, I realized in 1986 when he was convicted, my biggest worry was passing my driver’s test. To think a man was knowingly being wrongfully sent to death row, because he was Black would have been unthinkable to me then. My history class taught me that those things ended in the Jim Crow era. I was misinformed then, and I do not doubt that this still happens today.
Since the death penalty was enacted in Ohio in 1981, there have been 341 death sentences. Of those, 56 inmates have been executed, 119 remain on death row, and 11 inmates were exonerated. (The others either died of natural causes or had their sentences commuted to another penalty for various reasons.) According to the Ohio Innocence Project, more than 50% of Ohio’s death row is comprised of Black men even though Black people make up only 14% of our population. Ohio’s population is more than 80% white, but only 40% of death row inmates are white. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, more than 75% of perpetrators were sentenced to death in cases where the victims were white, even though nationally only 50% of murder victims are white. The cost to Ohio taxpayers in death sentence cases is $1 to $3 million more per case as opposed to life in prison cases according to the Attorney General’s office due to the ongoing appeals and court costs involved.
These statistics are sobering. Not only is it horrific to know we’ve most likely already put to death an innocent person, but that we will do so again. Aside from the cruelty and inhumanity of the death penalty, it is unjustly applied to those who are of color or commit crimes against white people. A Tarrance Group poll showed 59% of Ohioans support replacing the death penalty with life in prison without parole. Currently, there are two bi-partisan bills in committee that would ban the death penalty in Ohio: Senate Bill 101 and House Bill 259. Yet, Attorney General Yost is instead pushing House Bill 392 to add nitrogen hypoxia as a method of execution instead. This is a controversial new method of execution that so far only Alabama has used.
I encourage you to reach out to Rep. Ghanbari and Senator Gavarone in support of H.B. 259 and S.B. 101; and opposing H.B. 392. The time to end the death penalty is now. Two wrongs never make a right.
Shar Katzner
Bowling Green
