The debate over the death penalty

WVXU in Cincinnati reports that Gallup polling shows that as of last year, 53% of Americans supported capital punishment for murder. That support is on a downward trend, and concerns over the number of people on death row who have been exonerated is growing.

Since 1989, more than 3,500 people are known to have been exonerated after being wrongly convicted in the United States. Those exonerations include nearly 200 innocent people who had been sentenced to the death penalty, including 11 people on Ohio's death row. 

Cincinnati Edition host Lucy May Interviewed Pierce Reed, director of policy and engagement for the Ohio Innocence Project at UC Law; Louis Tobin, executive director of the Ohio Prosecuting Attorneys Association; former Ohio death row inmate Lamont Hunter and his attorney Erin Gallagher Barnhart, assistant federal public defender, Southern District of Ohio’s Capital Habeas Unit for a recent segment.  

Reed, Hunter and Barnhart are also participants in UC Law’s Death Penalty CLE & Community Roundtable scheduled for Friday, Nov. 1.  

There are two bills pending in the Ohio State House that would abolish the death penalty in Ohio and another that would allow the state to use nitrogen hypoxia, as used in other states such as Alabama. A case before the US Supreme Court may ultimately decide the fate of Oklahoma death row inmate Richard Glossip.

Listen to the WVXU segment online.

Featured top image of Cincinnati Edition host Lucy May and Pierce Reed, policy and engagement director for the Ohio Innocence Project UC Law. Photo provided.