How long is long enough?
The debate never seems to end about how much time should be spent on legal appeals before a convicted murderer in Ohio goes to the electric chair.The issue was recharged after Robert Buell, an Akron, Ohio, man convicted of raping and murdering an 11-year-old girl in 1982, came within one vote on the U.S. Supreme Court of dying in the electric chair at Lucasville in late January.
That would have given Buell the dubious distinction of being the first person executed in Ohio since Donald Reinbolt met his fate in "Old Sparky" in 1963 for killing a Columbus grocer.
In 1972, the U.S. Supreme Court declared the death penalty unconstitutional as "cruel and unusual punishment."
Four years later, the court said it's acceptable as long as certain legal safeguards are met. Ohio re-enacted its death penalty law to meet those standards in 1981.
In the Buell case, Ohio Attorney General Betty Montgomery pushed for dissolving a court-ordered stay of execution, even though Buell's case had not gone through the federal appeals process. In a 5-4 late-night vote, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a stay.
Ms. Montgomery later accused Buell's defense lawyers of "gaming the system," making a mockery of the death penalty by stretching the already-lengthy appeals process with last-minute "brinksmanship" tactics.
But the defenders say they're only doing their job, and Ms. Montgomery should not expect less.
K. Ronald Bailey, president of the Ohio Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, says if the state "is seeking to prosecute its citizens to the fullest extent of the law and to exact the ultimate penalty, then the criminal defense bar, in fulfilling its sworn duty to uphold the constitutions of both Ohio and the United States, must and will defend those same citizens to the fullest extent of the law.
"While there has been some criticism of the delays inherent in defending the citizens of Ohio that the state seeks to murder, it should be noted that it is a moot point to litigate the life and liberty of a citizen that the state has already executed."
Brad Barbin, head of the attorney general's criminal justice section, takes a different view.
He said lawyers in the Buell case had been told months ago by the judge to file for a habeas corpus writ so federal appeals could move ahead. But they delayed, instead filing only a notice of intent to file.
"What we're saying is, there are enough stages and enough time to get it filed," Barbin said. "Lawyers have to start acting like lawyers, not movie stars who are against the death penalty."
Barbin said he intends to continue pushing for state and federal measures to streamline and shorten the death penalty appeals process, and will help local prosecutors, particularly in small counties, to move such cases along more quickly.
David Bodiker, Ohio's public defender, notes that the death penalty is "a most saleable issue," but says recent attempts to speed up the process may actually have slowed it down by adding more steps. He estimates the time between conviction and execution in a fully litigated case should be about seven years.
As of March 8, there were 160 persons, all of them men, on death row in Ohio. Of the total, 82 are white and 78 are black. At the top of the list is John Glenn, 34, of Portage County, who has been there since March 12, 1982, for a murder carried out the year before.
Condemned inmates have a choice of electrocution or lethal injection. If they fail to make a choice, electrocution becomes the method.
Death row is at the Mansfield Correctional Institution.
But the death house, where executions are to be carried out, is at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility at Lucasville.
Bodiker contends that the U.S. Supreme Court intended to make executing a defendant a time-consuming process.
It requires cases to be accorded "the utmost due process" and that they be "fully and fairly and intensely litigated."
There is, he says, "no quick fix."
Carrying out the death penalty fairly "brings with it a lot of baggage. It's going to take lots of time, lots of money, and lots of litigation."
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service.)