Ohio Governor Mike DeWine has postponed the final execution set to take place this year. moving the date of execution to Quisi Bryan, who was found guilty of murdering the body of a Cleveland officers to the beginning of 2026.
This move has once more called into question the necessity for capital punishment within the State. With an non-official moratorium in effect, an experienced defense lawyer recently claimed there was no need in conducting a trial for death for his client, who is accused in the killing of the southern Ohio family.
“Why should we have to go through a death penalty trial when Ohio doesn’t have the death penalty?” Attorney John Parker said June 21 during a hearing in the case of George Wagner IV, charged with the murder in the deaths of 8 members from the Rhoden family.
Pike County Judge Randy Deering has yet to decide on Parker’s motion, which was filed in writing on the 7th of June. In response to a separate motion earlier this one year Deering denied a motion to get the aggravated murder charge against Wagner dismissed and thereby removing the possibility of a death penalty.
DeWine’s decision to postpone Bryan’s execution was among numerous reprieves the governor given in recent times in the struggle to come up with a sufficient supply of lethal injection.
DeWine is an Ohio Republican who is a Republican, has blamed the need for breaks to the state’s difficulty in obtaining medicines from companies that manufacture pharmaceuticals. DeWine has stated that he is worried that drug companiesthat do not want to use their drugs for executions might remove drugs from state hospitals in order in order to punish Ohio in the event that it does manage to obtain their drugs and then use them for lethal injections.
At present, 11 people are scheduled to be executed this year. It’s highly likely, however, that should DeWine win reelection, the executions could also be put off.
Bryan has been sentenced to execution for killing Cleveland Officer Wayne Leon in 2000 after the officer pulled over Bryan for traffic violations.
The state’s last execution occurred on August 18, 2018 the day that Ohio executed Robert Van Hook for killing the man he encountered in a bar located in Cincinnati the year 1985.
