In August, the Presbytery Council asked the Peacemaking and Justice Committee to bring a resolution to Presbytery on the death penalty in Ohio. The following resolution will be presented at the November 20th, 2007 stated Presbytery meeting. It is, until that time, only a recommendation.

The Death Penalty in Ohio

For many years the Presbyterian Church, along with numerous other organizations, has called for the abolition of the death penalty in the United States. In the past decades, the number of states that use the death penalty has dwindled. Today, Ohio is one of thirty-three states that use capital punishment. There are currently 186 people on death row in Ohio. Of these, 105 are minorities and 81 are white.

In an effort to make executions less disturbing to the public, methods of capital punishment have gradually shifted from hanging and the firing squad to the electric chair, the gas chamber and, finally, to lethal injection. Since 2001, the sole legal method of capital punishment in Ohio has been lethal injection, a process whereby three chemicals are injected into the prisoner’s veins. The first injection is supposed to render the prisoner unconscious, the second is supposed to produce paralysis, and the third stops the heart.

Calls for a moratorium on the death penalty in Ohio have come from religious denominations, the Ohio Council of Churches, the League of Women Voters and the American Bar Association, among others. The call for a moratorium arose from concerns about racial discrepancies in sentencing, prosecutorial withholding of exculpatory evidence, inadequate representation and review, execution of the innocent, and because of the failure of capital punishment to deter crime and improve public security. In addition, lethal injection procedures have left some prisoners conscious after the first injection while they were being rendered paralyzed by the second. The United States Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case next year on whether lethal injection violates the Constitutional prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.

Beyond this, religious organizations have long called the death penalty a denial of our faith in the possibility of human redemption through repentance and the grace of God. The 171st Presbyterian General Assembly (1959), in a statement affirmed by the GA in 1977, 1978, 1985, and 2000, said that “capital punishment cannot be condoned by an interpretation of the Bible based upon the revelation of God’s love in Jesus Christ.”

In light of these realities, the Peacemaking and Justice Committee of the Presbytery of Scioto Valley requests the Presbytery to pass a resolution calling upon Governor Ted Strickland to halt executions in the state of Ohio until the problems surrounding the death penalty are studied and addressed.