Yost continues to push for death sentences to be carried out

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(The Center Square) – Ohio Attorney General Yost believes the state is shrinking from its responsibility by not executing prisoners sentenced to death.

Yost recently told lawmakers in the House of Representatives victims should be the top priority and called the state’s capital punishment system costly and long broken, adding it shows “a dishonorable abdication of responsibility.”

Yost said all that while pushing for a bill that would approve the use of nitrogen hypoxia for executions in the state.

“An additional method of execution is necessary,” Yost recently testified before the House Judiciary Committee in support of House Bill 36.

Lethal injection is the only form of execution allowed by Ohio law.

Nine states allow lethal gas for execution, including Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Oklahoma, which specifically allow nitrogen hypoxia.

Republican Gov. Mike DeWine began a moratorium on Ohio executions in 2019 when he first took office and has said he does not expect any to take place throughout the end of his term in 2027.

In 2020, DeWine said the state could not get lethal injection drugs and told lawmakers they would have to find a different method to put inmates to death.

The state’s last execution came July 18, 2018, when Robert Van Hook was put to death by lethal injection for killing a man he met at a Cincinnati bar in 1985.

From 1981 through the end of last year, 336 people have received a combined 341 death sentences, according to Yost’s Capital Crime Report presented earlier this year. Fifty-six of those have been carried out.

There are 119 inmates on death row.

However, another Republican-led bill before the Judiciary Committee would get the state out of the death business completely. It would stop the death penalty, while also prohibiting taxpayer funds from being used for assisted suicide and clarify current law of funding abortion with taxpayer money.

House Bill 72 had its only hearing in March.