USA - Ohio. Governor spares record number of death row inmates.

Ohio governor spares record number of death row inmates. Ohio Gov. John Kasich has finished dealing with executions for the remainder of his time in office (January 14, 2019) following a modern-era record of death penalty commutations. The Republican governor spared 7 men from execution during his 2 terms in office. Kasich allowed 15 executions to proceed. Not since Democrat Mike DiSalle spared 6 death row inmates in the early 1960s has an Ohio governor spared so many killers during periods when the state had an active death chamber. Democratic Gov. Richard Celeste commuted 8 death sentences just days before leaving office in 1991, but none of those inmates' executions was imminent. Kasich's immediate predecessor, Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland, commuted 5 death sentences and allowed 17 executions during his 4-year term. Ohio resumed executions in 1999 under Gov. Bob Taft after a 36-year gap. Taft, a Republican, allowed 20 executions to proceed and spared just 1 inmate based on concerns raised by DNA evidence not available at the time of trial. Nationwide, governors have spared 288 death row inmates since the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of capital punishment in 1976, with a handful spared each year over the past decade. That doesn't include mass clemencies in states - such as New Jersey in 2007 - where the death penalty was abolished and entire death rows were emptied.