First Posted: 2/27/2015
LIMA — When a jury last week rejected the death penalty for a man who killed three including brutally beating two women, it left Prosecutor Juergen Waldick asking the same questions he’s asked for a number of years.
What does it take to achieve a death sentence in Allen County?
That same question can be asked around the state.
In Allen County, Waldick said about half the cases he indicts with death penalty specifications go to trial. Five have accepted plea deals for life in prison and in one a judge ruled a defendant was mentally retarded and could not face the death penalty under Ohio law.
In the five cases that Waldick has tried, he has achieved the death penalty in two, the Eureka Street killings in 2002 in which two girls, ages 3 and 17, were shot and killed. Four others were shot in the head but survived. Cleveland Jackson is scheduled to be executed next year for his role while the case against Jeronique Cunningham may be headed back to Allen County to be retried.
Waldick said achieving a death sentence is very hard and he rarely seeks the death penalty.
“Juries are reluctant. Locally, we found that. Not many murders get indicted that way,” he said.
The director of the Office of the Ohio Public Defender Tim Young said only about 5 percent of the cases indicted with a death penalty specification since 1984 have resulted in a jury choosing the death penalty.
The big change came with Senate Bill 2 that went into effect July 1, 1996, and gave juries the chance to choose life in prison with no chance for parole instead of the death penalty.
“It dramatically changed the death penalty status,” Young said.
Ohio has had a dramatic decline in the number of cases juries voted for the death penalty since 1996, Young said.
“It’s to the point it’s very difficult to accomplish the death penalty,” Waldick said.
Before Senate Bill 2, some jurors in post-trial interviews who voted for a death sentence said they were worried the defendant may someday be released so they voted for death, Young said.
Juries now have an alternative, he said.
“Jurors reserve death sentences for very bad cases,” Young said. “They want that person locked up but they don’t want to take that person’s life because of mitigation, that piece that makes the person human and makes them sympathetic.”
Ohio Northern University Law Professor Antoinette Clarke said life without parole is beneficial to the prosecution as a bargaining chip.
“It gives prosecutors an out,” she said.
Young said some jurors are just uncomfortable voting for the death penalty. There has been the execution of an innocent man in Texas that cannot be undone, he said.
Ohio has 141 inmates on death row with no executions planned for this year. In 2016 there is an execution planned each month, Young said.
“In this country, for every 10 people we execute there is an innocent person released from death row,” Young said.
But Waldick said, and Young agreed, in recent years the trend in cases going to trial where prosecutors are seeking the death penalty has been those where guilt is not in question and deciding the penalty is the main issue as it was in the Hager Church case in Allen County this past week where the jury chose a life sentence.
“The kind of cases that get a death specification are those that have overwhelming evidence,” Waldick said.
Young believes the death penalty is slowly vanishing in the United States. In the past decade, at least six states have done away with it as a form of punishment, he said.
He said the process is unfair and biased, and he ultimately believes that will result in the end of the death penalty.
“Nobody can define the worst of the worst. In some counties someone would get the death penalty would not be charged somewhere else,” Young said.
