Gov. Mike DeWine said Monday, Nov. 9, that he will not issue a blanket commutation for the 106 people on Ohio’s Death Row, even as he weighs commuting individual death sentences on a case-by-case basis before he leaves office in January, Corrections1 reported.
“I’ve made the decision that I’m not going to do a blanket reduction as California did,” DeWine said in an interview, according to Corrections1. “We will look at every single case and make decisions based on that case.” California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced last week that he will commute the sentences of all 548 inmates on California’s Death Row to life in prison without parole.
DeWine spokesman Dan Tierney echoed the case-by-case approach. “He is looking at things on a case-by-case basis,” Tierney told The Columbus Dispatch. “This is nothing blanket.” Under Ohio law, the governor cannot commute a death sentence without a recommendation from the Ohio Parole Board, and DeWine has asked the board to review and make recommendations in cases from at least 10 counties, including Cuyahoga, Summit and Lorain, according to Corrections1.
The Parole Board has scheduled December clemency hearings for Denny Obermiller on Dec. 1 and Melvin Bonnell on Dec. 7, both Cuyahoga County cases, according to the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office as reported by Corrections1. Hearings are also scheduled in December for Freddie McNeill and Stanley Jalowiec, and the board will interview Victoria Drain in mid-December, prosecutors’ offices told The Columbus Dispatch. The board abandoned plans to review three Hamilton County cases, according to records the prosecutor’s office provided to The Dispatch.
DeWine, who announced his personal opposition to the death penalty in June, has taken only one person off Death Row in nearly eight years as governor: Gregory Lott, whose sentence he commuted in May to life in prison without the possibility of parole, according to Corrections1. Ohio has not carried out an execution since 2018, before DeWine took office, The Dispatch reported.
The ACLU of Ohio welcomed the review. In a statement, the organization said it was “very encouraged that Governor DeWine is considering individual cases for clemency” and that it would follow the forthcoming Parole Board hearings closely, while noting that Ohio leads California in the number of people exonerated from Death Row.
DeWine said he has not decided how many sentences he will ultimately commute or when he will announce his decisions, according to Corrections1. The first of the scheduled Parole Board clemency hearings is set for Dec. 1.
Photo: Vivien McClain Photography, CC BY-SA 4.0