Report: Average Ohio death sentence lasts 21 years, costs millions

An Ohio inmate typically spends 21 years on death row and costs taxpayers up to five-times more for a capital case versus noncapital capital case, according to a new report released by Attorney General Dave Yost.

The release of the 2022 Capital Crimes Report comes less than two weeks after a bipartisan group of Ohio senators introduced legislation to end the death penalty in the state. Yost, a death penalty proponent, welcomes the debate and wants changes made to the current law.

“I personally support the death penalty, especially for the most abhorrent offenders, but I am only one voice,” Yost said. “Let’s open up the conversation and allow victims’ families to be heard.”

The annual report required by state law provides historical and other information about all 366 cases that have resulted in a death sentence since capital punishment was established by state law in 1981.

Those 366 cases resulted in 341 death sentences. Of those, 56 have been carried out.

The report’s executive summary says the current system is not fairly, equally or quickly enforced, creating distrust and disrespect for the law.

On average, someone sentenced to death spends nearly 21 years on death row before an execution date is set, mostly because of appeals, the report says. Also, the report says, the state spends millions – between 2.5 and five-times as much as a noncapital case – for death penalty cases.

“If we were starting from scratch to design a system for the ultimate punishment – whether that punishment is execution or, instead, life in prison without parole – neither death-penalty opponents nor death-penalty supporters would create anything like Ohio’s current system, which produces churn, waste, and endless lawsuits and nothing else,” the Executive Summary says.

Yost used the case of Danny Lee Hill as an example of a failed system.

Hill has been on death row for 37 years, filing 25 appeals. In late March, a federal appeals court agreed to reconsider a previous order to continue the process.

“Danny Lee Hill raped, tortured and murdered a 12-year-old Warren boy, Raymond Fife, in 1985,” Yost said. “His ability to delay – again and again and again – what a jury determined to be a just punishment for his unspeakable crimes is one example of many that reinforce just how broken the system is. Where is the closure for the young victim’s family?”

As previously reported by The Center Square, the current proposed legislation would make life-without-parole the ultimate punishment in the state.

While he supports the death penalty, Yost believes the system needs to be changed.

“The current state of limbo is unfair to victims’ families, unjust to communities, and disrespectful to jurors who did their duty and followed the law in deciding that the ultimate punishment fit the crime,” Yost said. “Ohioans deserve to know – will death sentences be carried out or won’t they?”