PRESS RELEASE
Ohioans to Stop Executions
Contact: Abraham J. Bonowitz
April 10, 2014
Ohioans To Stop Executions Applauds Death Penalty Task Force, Launches Searchable Database of Recommendations
COLUMBUS – The Ohio Supreme Court Joint Task Force to Review the Administration of Ohio’s Death Penalty meets today to finalize its recommendations. Concurrently, Ohioans to Stop Executions launched a new tool on its web page. This new tool will allow Ohioans to search, sort, and understand the more than 50 recommendations intended to help make Ohio’s death penalty more fair. The OTSE/Task Force search tool may be used at www.OTSE.org
“Today the Task Force is completing its work by releasing a report with 56 recommendations that attempt to address the failures of Ohio’s death penalty system,” said Kevin Werner, executive director of the statewide anti-death penalty coalition. “I personally watched these recommendations evolve from meeting to meeting as the state’s appointed experts decided how to solve the problems with the death penalty. Ultimately, we know that there’s only one problem—the death penalty itself, which the Task Force was precluded from considering as a whole. Anyone who really looks at this issue tends to agree that the only way to fix the death penalty is to get rid of it. Until that day comes, Ohioans to Stop Executions will work to ensure that the reforms that will make the biggest impact are legislated. If we have to have a death penalty, let’s make it a fairer one.”
PRODUCERS/EDITORS: Ohioans to Stop Executions is available for comment, interviews and talk show programs, and can also help you reach spokespersons such as former directors of the Ohio Department of Corrections who oversaw many executions and now oppose them, Ohio murder victim family members, exonerated Ohio death row prisoners, litigators, and certain members of the Ohio Supreme Court Joint Task Force to Review Ohio’s Death Penalty. Contact Abe Bonowitz to discuss at abe@otse.org or 800-973-6548.
Please also visit www.OTSE.org to see our report issued earlier this month – The Death Lottery: How Race & Geography Determine Who Goes to Ohio’s Death Row
Follow us on Twitter @OhStopExecution and follow #OHRepeal