COLUMBUS, Ohio — Editor's note: the video in the player above is from a story published on December 7, 2020.
Governor Mike DeWine does not believe that lethal injections are viable options for executions according to a new interview with the Associated Press.
The Ohio governor sat down with AP recently to talk about the year that has been, including the COVID-19 pandemic, recent attempts by the Ohio legislature to limit his power, and a slew of other topics.
DeWine told AP that it's “pretty clear” that the state will not have executions in 2021, but also that a switch of execution methods isn't of the legislature's highest priority, at the moment.
“Lethal injection appears to us to be impossible from a practical point of view today,” the governor told AP, also adding that Ohio seemingly has an “unofficial moratorium” on capital punishment.
Governor DeWine also told AP that he is now “much more skeptical about whether it meets the criteria that was certainly in my mind when I voted for the death penalty and that was that it in fact did deter crime, which to me is the moral justification.”
The last state-ordered execution took place in July of 2018, in which Robert Van Hook for killing a man in Cincinnatti in 1985.