In January 2024, Ohio lawmakers announced plans to expand the use of the death penalty to permit executions with nitrogen gas, as Alabama had just done a week earlier. But at the same time the Attorney General and the Ohio Prosecuting Attorneys Association are championing this legislation, a bipartisan group of state legislators has introduced a bill to abolish the death penalty based on “significant concerns on who is sentenced to death and how that sentence is carried out.” The competing narratives make it more important than ever for Ohioans to have a meaningful, accurate understanding of how capital punishment is being used, including whether the state has progressed beyond the mistakes of its past.
Ohio’s Black Laws Demonstrate That from the Beginning, Racial Discrimination Was Baked into the State’s Very Foundations.
Early 19th century Ohio Black Laws imposed various legal restrictions on the rights and status of Black people in the state, not dissimilar to what would later become Black Codes in many Southern states. As constitutional historian Dr. Stephen Middleton explains, “Although the penal code of Ohio did not explicitly provide for a dual system for handling criminal cases, the Black Laws naturally made race an element in the criminal justice system.”
Ohio’s 1807 “Negro Evidence Law” prohibited Black people from testifying against white people in court, thus instituting a legal double standard. Articles in African American newspapers from the time reported numerous instances where white assailants attacked Black victims with impunity because there was no legal consequence without a white person who could testify on the victims’ behalf. The state also passed racial restrictions on juries in 1816 and 1831, officially barring Black people from jury service. These laws no longer exist, but modern studies reveal that jury discrimination continues.
The Overrepresentation of White Victim Cases and Overt Displays of Racism in Capital Trials Demonstrate That Race Continues to Play a Prejudicial Role in Death Sentencing.
One of the most significant ties between historical death sentencing and the modern use of capital punishment is the preferential valuing of white victims. Multiple Ohio-specific studies have concluded that when a case involves a white victim—especially a white female victim—defendants are more likely to receive a death sentence or be executed. A review of all aggravated murder charges in Hamilton County from January 1992 through August 2017 revealed that prosecutors are 4.54 times more likely to file charges with death penalty eligibility if there is at least one white victim, compared to similarly situated cases without white victims. A separate study of Ohio executions between 1976 and 2014 found that homicides involving white female victims are six times more likely to result in an execution than homicides involving Black male victims. DPIC independently analyzed race of victim data for all 465 death sentences in the state and found that 75% of death sentences were for cases with at least one white victim. For context, most murder victims in the state are Black (66%).
Black capital defendants have also faced instances of overt racism from jurors, prosecutors, and even their own attorneys. During closing arguments, the prosecuting attorney in Dwight Denson’s trial suggested that if jurors did not sentence him to death, they might as well rename Cincinnati’s Over-the-Rhine neighborhood to “Jungle Land,” adding, “Leave it to Dwight Denson. Leave it to people like him.” An attorney for Malik Allah-U-Akbar (tried as Odraye Jones) reiterated false, racialized testimony from an expert witness during closing arguments: “I think it’s a quarter of the…urban [B]lack American youth come up with antisocial personality disorder…. This isn’t a situation you can treat. … You have to put him out of society until it runs its course.”
As the current debate over the use of the death penalty in Ohio continues, this report provides historical information, context, and data to inform the critical decisions that will follow.
2. Homicides involving white female victims are six times more likely to result in an execution than those involving Black male victims even though 44% of murder victims are Black men. One of the most persistent forms of racial bias present in capital cases is the race-of-victim effect, shown when cases with at least one white victim disproportionately result in a death sentence. This race-of-victim effect demonstrates one of the strongest ties between the historical application of the death penalty and its use in modern day. Modern statistics reveal the same bias in favor of white victims, and, again, white women in particular, continues today.
An analysis of Ohio executions between 1976 and 2014 found that the race and gender of the victim play a substantial role in the state’s use of the death penalty. Homicides involving white female victims are six times more likely to result in an execution than homicides involving Black victims. A separate study of all aggravated murder charges in Hamilton County (Cincinnati)—an outlier in its high use of the death penalty—revealed that prosecutors are 4.54 times more likely to seek the death penalty if there is at least one white victim, compared to similarly situated cases without white victims.
Charles “Click” Mitchell
Estimates of 1,500 to 5,000 people gathered outside the jail where Charles “Click” Mitchell, a 23-year-old Black man, was waiting to be transferred to the state penitentiary. Mr. Mitchell had pled guilty to raping a white woman in Champaign County in June 1897 and was sentenced to 20 years in prison. After the judge publicly lamented that Mr. Mitchell should have received the death penalty, the mob took him from jail to the public square where they brutally beat and hanged him. The New York Times wrote that “There has not and could not be a more inexcusable lynching”—not only because of the brutality involved, but also because it happened in Ohio instead of the Deep South. The Times article concluded by drawing attention to the importance of location: “It would be disgraceful if it were told of a mining camp. But it is told of an old and settled town, fully equipped with schools and churches, which fairly represents the civilization of the Middle West of the United States. In that point of view it is extremely discouraging.”
Ignoring the photographs taken of the lynch mob in broad daylight, an all-white grand jury refused to indict anyone for Mr. Mitchell’s lynching, claiming a lack of evidence. An article in The Dayton Herald wrote that “Urbana citizens have started a movement for a different punishment for rape in this State. An organization will be formed through the State, and a petition to the next Legislature circulated, making death the penalty for the crime.”
Mr. Mitchell was just one of many Black men who received some form of lethal punishment because he was accused of harming a white woman.
Kevin Keith
Kevin Keith was sentenced to death for a triple homicide in Crawford County in February 1994. Mr. Keith has continuously filed appeals in state and federal courts, arguing the prosecution’s use of eyewitness testimonies and forensic evidence was improper. Mr. Keith argues that the police pursued him as a suspect from the start, using circumstantial evidence and false eyewitnesses testimony to identify Mr. Keith as the perpetrator. Police ignored a surviving victim’s identification of an alternate suspect and a failed identification of Mr. Keith. Experts stated that despite the vague description of a “large Black man,” eyewitnesses routinely identified Mr. Keith due to the obstruction of his facial features and the accompanying options in the lineup. The defense also alleges a Brady violation, in which the prosecution withheld information that diminishes the credibility of the State’s forensic analyst, Michelle Yezzo. Ms. Yezzo’s personnel files indicate that she had been known to “stretch the truth to satisfy a department” and she had referred to her Black coworker as “a n****r in the woodpile” and “n****r b*tch.” Since his conviction, numerous people have called for Mr. Keith to be pardoned, for his sentence to be commuted, or for a new trial. In 2010, Mr. Keith was granted clemency by then-Governor Ted Strickland thirteen days before his scheduled execution, citing questionable evidence in the case. Mr. Keith continues to serve a life sentence in Ohio.