Ohio Governor Mike DeWine announced Tuesday that he now supports abolishing the state’s death penalty, citing data showing it no longer serves as an effective deterrent to violent crime. The Republican governor, who played a role in shaping Ohio’s capital punishment laws more than four decades ago, described his change of stance during a news conference in Columbus.

DeWine, 79, said his experience over nearly 50 years—from his beginnings as a county prosecutor to his roles as Ohio’s attorney general and governor—has led him to conclude that the death penalty fails to achieve its intended purpose. He pointed to declining numbers of death sentences handed down by courts, lengthy delays caused by legal appeals, and the fact that many inmates on death row eventually die of natural causes or suicide without being executed. “Each decade that the death penalty has been in effect, the chances of a murderer getting executed get more and more remote,” he said.

Since taking office in 2019, DeWine has repeatedly postponed scheduled executions, effectively maintaining an unofficial moratorium. He also highlighted the difficulties states face in obtaining lethal injection drugs, a problem partly traced to pharmaceutical companies’ reluctance to supply the medications. Efforts by the federal government in recent years to assist states, including Ohio, in securing these drugs have made little progress.

Despite DeWine’s announcement, immediate legislative repeal of capital punishment in Ohio appears unlikely. Republican House Speaker Matt Huffman previously expressed strong opposition to abolition efforts, a position supported by former Attorney General Dave Yost. It remains unclear whether interim Attorney General Andy Wilson, who took office last month, will take a different approach. The Catholic Conference of Ohio, which praised DeWine’s call to end the death penalty, advocates for punishments that respect human dignity, reflecting the belief that all individuals are made in the image of God.

Ohio has not carried out an execution since July 2018, when Robert Van Hook was put to death for a 1985 murder. The state reinstated the death penalty in 1981 after a prior law was invalidated by the U.S. Supreme Court, but executions did not resume until 1999. Since then, 56 inmates have been executed. Thirty executions remain scheduled over the next four years, according to the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections, though DeWine said he anticipates no further executions during his term.

Nationally, several states have moved away from capital punishment in recent years. New Hampshire abolished it in 2019, followed by Colorado in 2020 and Virginia in 2021. Pennsylvania’s governor has urged lawmakers to end the practice, while Oregon’s governor commuted the sentences of its remaining death row prisoners and ordered its execution chamber dismantled.

DeWine’s shift on the issue reflects broader debates about the fit between capital punishment, justice, and morality. He noted growing skepticism about whether the death penalty actually deters crime, which he views as the core moral justification for its use. Efforts to find alternative execution methods, including nitrogen gas, have stalled amid legal challenges and public scrutiny. The governor emphasized that his opposition now comes from both pragmatic considerations and evolving ethical concerns surrounding the death penalty’s application in Ohio.