A top leader in the Ohio legislature says his support for the death penalty is wavering. This comes as Gov. Mike DeWine's administration said it doesn’t think there’s a way to carry out executions that a federal court would find suitable.
House Speaker Larry Householder (R-Glenford) said the death penalty is the law, but he personally is becoming less supportive of it.
"Over the years we've gone from electrocution to lethal injection and now there's issues being raised about lethal injection so it's just becoming more and more difficult to do and it's more and more expensive."
In February, a federal judge called the state's lethal injection protocol "cruel and unusual." Pharmaceutical companies are refusing to sell drugs to states for executions. While one state lawmaker has proposed using police-seized fentanyl for executions, DeWine said he's told Householder and Senate President Larry Obhof (R-Medina) that he doesn’t see a lethal injection method that would work under existing state law.
