By Jeremy Pelzer
cleveland.com
COLUMBUS, Ohio — Ohio won’t hold any executions in 2022 as Gov. Mike DeWine on Friday issued reprieves for three death-row inmates set to be put to death this year.
DeWine postponed execution dates for convicted murderers Percy Hutton, Douglas Coley, and Cedric Carter until 2025. The announcement means that 2022 will be the fourth year in a row Ohio has not held any executions at the state’s death chamber in Lucasville.
The governor’s decision means that the next person set for execution is Montgomery County murderer Antonio Franklin on Jan. 12, 2023. Ohio hasn’t put anyone to death since Robert Van Hook in July 2018.
DeWine, a Greene County Republican, has issued orders pushing back execution dates at least a dozen times since he took office in 2019. DeWine said in 2020 that, due to ongoing problems finding lethal injection drugs, there would be no more executions in Ohio unless state lawmakers pick an alternative execution method — a step the legislature has so far shown no interest in taking.
In a release, DeWine says that he is delaying Hutton’s execution date from June 22 until June 18, 2025. He also pushed back the execution dates of Coley from July 20 until Sept. 24, 2025, and Carter from Aug. 24 until Aug. 27, 2025.
Hutton, a Cleveland resident, was sentenced to death in 1986 for killing a man after being accused of stealing a sewing machine that had $750 hidden in it.
Carter, of Hamilton County, was convicted of murdering a United Dairy Farmers convenience store clerk during a robbery in 1992.
Coley received the death penalty for murdering 21-year-old Samar El-Okdi during a 1997 carjacking in Toledo.
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