Prosecutors on a task force evaluating Ohio’s death penalty say recommendations the panel is considering would effectively curtail use of capital punishment in Ohio.
Abolishing the death penalty was not the goal of the Joint Task Force to Review the Administration of Ohio’s Death Penalty, said Franklin County Prosecutor Ron O’Brien. But the recommendations it is considering could effectively make capital cases so difficult that prosecutors won’t pursue them.
O’Brien is part of a group that intends to present a dissent to the recommendations, perhaps by next week. Others include representatives for Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy McGinty and Hamilton County’s Joseph Deters.
Chief among the concerns is a recommendation that Ohio create a death penalty charging committee under the attorney general that would have to give its approval before a county prosecutor could pursue a capital case. That recommendation, O’Brien said, would seem to clash with the discretion county prosecutors have to decide what charges to file and what cases to pursue.
Other recommendations deal with levels of evidence required to pursue a death sentence — changes that would functionally make it nearly impossible to pursue capital cases, O’Brien said.
Among them, a requirement that a death sentence not be considered unless biological or DNA evidence links the defendant to the murder, or there is a videotaped confession by the accused or a some other video recording that shows the defendant was the murderer.
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