Speaker 1: A warning. This episode contains language and depictions of violence
Speaker 1: that may be disturbing to some listeners. In the United States,
Speaker 1: only people get the depth. John poor white, poor blacks,
Speaker 1: and poor his fans. You know, I don't know, rich person,
Speaker 1: don't get that type of guilty. Derek Jamison death Row
Speaker 1: Exonerie number one nineteen came within hours of being executed
Speaker 1: by the State of Ohio. We got one of the
Speaker 1: best court systems in the world, but we make mistake
Speaker 1: and we should never had a death Johney, because a
Speaker 1: lot of poor people go die, like Keith Lamar, who
Speaker 1: is scheduled to be executed by the State of Ohio
Speaker 1: on November sixteenth, twenty twenty three. No, my time, the
Speaker 1: clappers went out, putting Keith's innocence or guilt aside. Is
Speaker 1: the death penalty fair? And will the changes some are
Speaker 1: trying to make even in this case, and now we're
Speaker 1: down two months. My time is steadily you know, running out.
Speaker 1: I'm Leah Rothman. This is the real Killer Episode ten.
Speaker 1: The clock is ticking. Let's be real. The death penalty
Speaker 1: has been a controversial subject for some time now. It
Speaker 1: seems the first recorded execution in the United States was
Speaker 1: in sixteen oh eight, when the states were still just
Speaker 1: a bunch of colonies. According to a database of executions
Speaker 1: called the sp File, from sixteen oh eight to nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy six, more than fourteen thousand people were executed. According
Speaker 1: to the Death Penalty Information Center, since nineteen seventy six,
Speaker 1: there have been fifteen hundred and sixty three people executed
Speaker 1: in the United States, and in Ohio. Since the state
Speaker 1: first started executing people, three hundred and ninety three people
Speaker 1: have been put to death. In the eighteen hundreds, people
Speaker 1: were publicly hanged, then came the electric chair. In nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy two, the US Supreme Court ruled that the death
Speaker 1: penalty was unconstitutional. In seventy four, the state revised the
Speaker 1: death penalty law, but the US Supreme Court rejected it.
Speaker 1: So in nineteen eighty one, Ohio drafted a new law
Speaker 1: to reflect the strict criteria for imposing the death sentence,
Speaker 1: and lawmakers enacted that Eighteen years later, the state resumed
Speaker 1: executions there. First was Wilfred Barry, nicknamed the Volunteer because
Speaker 1: Barry actually volunteered to be executed. In two thousand and one,
Speaker 1: the states stopped using the electric chair and Old Sparky,
Speaker 1: the electric chair at Lucasville was officially decommissioned. All executions
Speaker 1: from that point on have been carried out by lethal injection.
Speaker 1: Some years later, Dayton's WDTN reports a Preble County killer
Speaker 1: is dead tonight after the state's first execution of twenty fourteen,
Speaker 1: Dennis McGuire was also the first in the nation to
Speaker 1: receive a new two drug combination because of a shortage
Speaker 1: of penabarbital. Reportedly because of that new drug cocktail, Dennis
Speaker 1: McGuire chokes and gasps for air for almost twenty five
Speaker 1: minutes before dying. In the years that follow, several executions
Speaker 1: are stayed because of questions regarding Ohio's execution protocol, but
Speaker 1: in twenty seventeen and twenty eighteen, three more people are
Speaker 1: put to death. Then there's another break in the carrying
Speaker 1: out of executions, but not in the eduling of them.
Speaker 1: In December of twenty eighteen, Cincinnati's w KRC Local twelve
Speaker 1: reports the Ohio Supreme Court set an execution day for
Speaker 1: Keith Lamar. He's scheduled to die November sixteenth of twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three, just months after Keith's date is set. A
Speaker 1: federal judge comes out and compares Ohio's execution protocol to
Speaker 1: a combination of waterboarding, suffocation, and exposure to chemical fire.
Speaker 1: So Governor Mike DeWine postpones executions in twenty nineteen and
Speaker 1: twenty twenty. Here he is in a twenty twenty interview
Speaker 1: with the Associated Press. We do have really an unofficial moratorium.
Speaker 1: You know, there's not going to be an execution in
Speaker 1: their state unless the state legislature changes the law. They
Speaker 1: would have to come up with a different way of
Speaker 1: execution other than lethal injection. Lethal injection is the only
Speaker 1: way prescribed under the current law, and lethal injection appears
Speaker 1: to us to be impossible from a practical point of
Speaker 1: view today. But looking for a different method in which
Speaker 1: to kill people is very different than opposing it altogether.
Speaker 1: Justification for capital punishment is that it saves lives, It
Speaker 1: serves as a deterrent, and that would be the moral justification.
Speaker 1: So although Ohio today still has an unofficial moratorium on executions,
Speaker 1: Keith and his supporters are preparing themselves for the worst,
Speaker 1: believing the state might jump start them in time to
Speaker 1: put to death. Keith, one of the first of the
Speaker 1: notorious Lucasville five. When it comes to Ohio legislators, many
Speaker 1: aren't spending their time looking for a new protocol in
Speaker 1: which to execute people. They're hard at work trying to
Speaker 1: put an end to capital punishment for once and for all.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of reasons for people to be against
Speaker 1: the death penalty. That's State Senator Nicki Antonio, whom I
Speaker 1: speak with over zoom. She says finding a better way
Speaker 1: in which to kill people isn't good enough. A Democrat
Speaker 1: who is currently the minority leader, Antonio has been working
Speaker 1: to abolish the death penalty since she first took office
Speaker 1: as a state representative back in twenty eleven. Back then,
Speaker 1: there were three issues closest to her heart. One of
Speaker 1: them was, as a former teacher and a special ed teacher,
Speaker 1: I really wanted to affect public policy, and at the time,
Speaker 1: it was the way we fund public schools. Our funding
Speaker 1: had been found to be unconstitutional, and so I really
Speaker 1: wanted to go to Columbus and make a difference in
Speaker 1: that arena. One was fairness for the LGBTQ community. I'm
Speaker 1: the first person to ever get elected in the state
Speaker 1: of Ohio to the legislature from the LGBTQ community, So
Speaker 1: it goes without saying that. I thought myself, my family,
Speaker 1: and my people should also be considered equal in the
Speaker 1: state of Ohio. The third thing was ending the death
Speaker 1: penalty in the state of Ohio, and over time her
Speaker 1: fight to abolish the death penalty has gained some unlikely support.
Speaker 1: I am not a liberal by any shot of the imagination.
Speaker 1: If you look at my bio, I'm as red as
Speaker 1: red can be. I'm a very conservative person. That's Republican
Speaker 1: State Representative Jean Schmidt. I speak with her over zoom too.
Speaker 1: Representative Schmidt began her political career as a state representative
Speaker 1: in two thousand and one, then spent seven plus years
Speaker 1: in the US House of Representatives, and is now back
Speaker 1: serving her second term in the Ohio House of Representatives.
Speaker 1: Her position on capital punishment has gone from one end
Speaker 1: of the spectrum to the absolute other. I went to
Speaker 1: the state legislature, fought to keep the death penalty, went
Speaker 1: to Congress, and still starting to evolve into questioning the
Speaker 1: death penalty. It's when I left Congress met sister Helen Prejean.
Speaker 1: I read that book Dead Man Walking. I'm going to
Speaker 1: go hear her, and she talked about it from God's position.
Speaker 1: These are people just like you and I are people,
Speaker 1: and God creates everyone to love Him, to know love
Speaker 1: and serve him. And whilst some of us continue to
Speaker 1: try to do that every day, others get off the
Speaker 1: beaten path. But that doesn't mean there are any less
Speaker 1: of a child of God. And we are pro life
Speaker 1: at the beginning through fertilization, and we say natural death.
Speaker 1: Killing somebody by artificial means no matter what the reason
Speaker 1: is wrong, and that's what really unsettled me. And meeting
Speaker 1: Joe Dambroggio was another one, and his story is so powerful.
Speaker 1: It's like a John Brisham novel. He's in prison for
Speaker 1: twenty five years, he's on death row and he was
Speaker 1: exonerated and I happened to be there when he got
Speaker 1: out and he was talking about it, and it had
Speaker 1: a profound impact. And when some of my friends and
Speaker 1: my cousin thought I should go back into the state legislature,
Speaker 1: I prayed about it and said, Okay, God, if you
Speaker 1: want me to do this, I said, but I promise
Speaker 1: you I will work hard to end the death penalty,
Speaker 1: and I will work hard to end abortion and I
Speaker 1: have been true to that promise. While it's an understatement
Speaker 1: to say that Representative Schmidt and Senator Antonio are on
Speaker 1: opposite sides of the abortion debate, they are aligned when
Speaker 1: it comes to doing a way with the death penalty.
Speaker 1: Here's Senator Antonio again, there are certain things that we
Speaker 1: should not be legislating. Certainly around the issue of choice,
Speaker 1: that's one of them. But around the issue of whether
Speaker 1: or not to execute someone, I believe the legislature should
Speaker 1: intervene and say none of us should make that decision.
Speaker 1: And she says there are many reasons why, because it's
Speaker 1: the right thing to do in terms of human beings,
Speaker 1: not taking a life that states sanction. There's religious practice,
Speaker 1: there's the inequities of the death penalty, and in Ohio,
Speaker 1: the margins couldn't be clearer about the inequities with how
Speaker 1: the death penalty is dispensed. There's a former Chief Justice
Speaker 1: in Ohio who was responsible for bringing the death penalty
Speaker 1: back and then years later actually came and testified for
Speaker 1: my bill to end the use of the death penalty
Speaker 1: because he said, this bill, this law has become a lottery,
Speaker 1: a death lottery for people of color. He called it out.
Speaker 1: He knew that it was the way it was put
Speaker 1: into practice was unfair, and the only way he saw
Speaker 1: to make anything fair was to take it away. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's pretty sobering. So there's many reasons. Then there's the
Speaker 1: reason of recidivism. Does it prevent anyone from committing murder
Speaker 1: because they think they're going to get the death penalty?
Speaker 1: And nobody's been able to prove that that it's a deterrent.
Speaker 1: It's not a deterrent. And finally, one of the biggest reasons,
Speaker 1: some of the most compelling information we have is that
Speaker 1: we don't always get it right. Even with DNA information,
Speaker 1: even with all of the science behind everything, we have
Speaker 1: gotten it wrong. And over the years we have a
Speaker 1: number of people that have been exonerated in the state
Speaker 1: of Ohio. Y'aller takes this one person. If there's one
Speaker 1: exonery that comes in front of us because we got
Speaker 1: it wrong, that should tell us that we can never
Speaker 1: be sure that we get it right. Here's Representative Jean Schmidt. Again,
Speaker 1: look at the Tony Uponovich story. This guy didn't even
Speaker 1: do the crime. Anthony Aponovich was convicted and sentenced to
Speaker 1: death for the nineteen eighty four rape and murder of
Speaker 1: Marianne Flynn in Cleveland. After spending about twenty years on
Speaker 1: death row, they discover that the prosecution withheld DNA. They
Speaker 1: get it tested, it proves he didn't do it. If
Speaker 1: he didn't raper, then you didn't kill her. When he
Speaker 1: was let go, it was with prejudice. The prosecutor realized
Speaker 1: that they didn't do a proper format on the DNA.
Speaker 1: So he's back on death row and they can never
Speaker 1: use that DNA again because it's no longer new evidence.
Speaker 1: That Anthony Aponovitch story is crazy, right, I mean, if
Speaker 1: I understand correctly, it came down to a technicality that
Speaker 1: he didn't ask the DNA to be tested. He was
Speaker 1: out for almost three years, right, and then they picked
Speaker 1: him up and took him back to prison based on
Speaker 1: that technicality because he didn't know to ask to have
Speaker 1: that DNA tested, Which is just it's mind blowing. That's
Speaker 1: something like that could happen and he could be executed.
Speaker 1: When I met sister Helen Preischon, she talked about a
Speaker 1: case in Louisiana who they had the evidence to prove
Speaker 1: the guiddn't do it. They were two minutes late at
Speaker 1: the federal court to deliver it he was executing. This
Speaker 1: is crazy to kill on a technicality when they're innocent,
Speaker 1: and yet we have the opportunity to do it in Ohio.
Speaker 1: I do have a bill to correct the DNA issue,
Speaker 1: but while I'm asking for it to be retroactive, the
Speaker 1: prosecutors will most likely object, and so it will be
Speaker 1: a moving forward bill, so it won't answer his problem,
Speaker 1: it'll address future problems. And that's just crazy. And the
Speaker 1: man didn't do it. He didn't rape her, so he
Speaker 1: didn't kill her. I have visited him and he said,
Speaker 1: you know, the saddest he said, the most tortuous thing
Speaker 1: for him is having freedom for almost three years, being
Speaker 1: able to smell the air that you and I smell.
Speaker 1: He married a woman that was his age. She had
Speaker 1: grandchildren she was raising. He finally got to have kids
Speaker 1: that he could help raise. He had the life he's
Speaker 1: wanted and deserved, and we took it away on a technicality.
Speaker 1: But now, almost four decades later, Anthony Apanovich still sits
Speaker 1: on death row. To bec clear, you want to abolish
Speaker 1: the death penalty, not just for the innocence, but for
Speaker 1: the guilty as well. It doesn't matter if you're guilty
Speaker 1: or innocence. There should not be a death penalty in
Speaker 1: Ohio anymore. No. Now, it doesn't end the torture for
Speaker 1: the victims. It costs more money, cost more money to house,
Speaker 1: It costs more money to prosecute, cost more money to
Speaker 1: kill him. I continue my conversation with Ohio State Representative
Speaker 1: Jean Schmidt. My county, Claremont County, we don't do the
Speaker 1: death penalty because of the cost involved of bringing it
Speaker 1: to trial. It can bankrupt to county. If you're a
Speaker 1: wealthy county like Hamilton County or Cuyahoga County, how you
Speaker 1: can afford that expense, But when you're a Claremont County
Speaker 1: you can't. According to the Dayton Daily News, death penalty
Speaker 1: cases in Ohio cost on average three million dollars, compared
Speaker 1: to one million for people's sentenced to life without parole.
Speaker 1: And by the way, according to a twenty eighteen Cincinnati
Speaker 1: Inquirer article, Hamilton County, where Keith Lamar's prosecutors are from,
Speaker 1: has had more death penalty cases and has executed more
Speaker 1: people than in all of Ohio's eighty eight counties since
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty one. In fact, according to that same article,
Speaker 1: in twenty eighteen, Hamilton County had more people on death
Speaker 1: row per capita than other major cities like Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: San Diego, and Miami. The reason why is not clear cut,
Speaker 1: but one reason might be that Hamilton County has been
Speaker 1: a conservative county that elects conservative prosecutors who have a
Speaker 1: tough on crime mentality. I wonder who does Senator nicki
Speaker 1: Antonio say she gets the most resistance from and why.
Speaker 1: You know, it's interesting because many prosecutors have come out
Speaker 1: and actually told me they are now recently supportive of
Speaker 1: ending the death penalty because they see the traps that
Speaker 1: are created, and that many of them have told me
Speaker 1: they believe things would be a lot more clear cut
Speaker 1: if we didn't have it anymore. Not all the prosecutors
Speaker 1: are there, So that's one that's one issue that they
Speaker 1: lose some kind of leverage or some kind of negotiation
Speaker 1: tool if you're going to negotiate with the death penalty,
Speaker 1: just as easily negotiate with life without parole, which is
Speaker 1: a horrible, horrible sentence. Frankly, I've visited many of the prisons.
Speaker 1: I've visited the high security ones. That is not a
Speaker 1: place I would want to live my life out my
Speaker 1: years out for sure. Some folks in law enforcement believe
Speaker 1: that there should always be an exemption for someone who
Speaker 1: commits murder against a law A person in law enforcement
Speaker 1: and believes that that should be the exception, So there's
Speaker 1: some pushback there. The final place I think where there's pushback,
Speaker 1: whether real or perceived, is that folks make this and
Speaker 1: I think it's a false notion to equate being tough
Speaker 1: on crime with being pro death penalty. I believe you
Speaker 1: can be very tough on crime and still want to
Speaker 1: abolish the use of the death penalty. I think those
Speaker 1: things are not mutually exclusive at all. One of the
Speaker 1: biggest misnomers I think that sometimes people think that this
Speaker 1: is about protecting the families of victims, or that victims
Speaker 1: families want us to execute perpetrators. And what I've heard
Speaker 1: from families that's really stunned me was to the contrary
Speaker 1: that they actually would like the death penalty ended, because
Speaker 1: every time there's an appeal, every time there's a new
Speaker 1: court case, the family has to relive this terrible tragic
Speaker 1: thing that happened to their family and their loved one,
Speaker 1: and frankly, they've said they would like an end to this.
Speaker 1: They want closure. Put that person behind bars, keep them there,
Speaker 1: let them wake up every day and think about what
Speaker 1: they did to put themselves there. And there are some
Speaker 1: people who have talked to me, victims families, who have said,
Speaker 1: but I also want that person to have an opportunity
Speaker 1: for redemption, which when you think about, I don't know
Speaker 1: that I could be that person that's really powerful. So
Speaker 1: on some days when this is really really hard, that
Speaker 1: motivates me to keep going. According to Gallup's twenty twenty
Speaker 1: two annual poll on Values and Beliefs, fifty five percent
Speaker 1: of Americans who participated in this survey said they believe
Speaker 1: the death penalty is morally acceptable. Before interviewing Senator Antonio
Speaker 1: and Representative Schmidt, I told them that our focus this
Speaker 1: season is on the Lucasville uprising Keith Lamar and how
Speaker 1: he is the first of the five men on death
Speaker 1: row to be given an execution date. Here's Representative Jeane Schmidt.
Speaker 1: Lucasville at the time was an awful place, and prisoners
Speaker 1: do have some rights and they were being neglected. So
Speaker 1: this riot occurred and it was a very touchy situation.
Speaker 1: I remember reading it in the Enquirer and my family
Speaker 1: discussing it at the kitchen table. I don't know whether
Speaker 1: he's innocent or guilty, but I have enough suspicions that
Speaker 1: if I was on the jury, I would never allow
Speaker 1: for the death penalty to occur. I think this state
Speaker 1: had too much motive to get it. I think that
Speaker 1: the state wanted to find a person. He had already
Speaker 1: killed somebody in his life, so what did it matter?
Speaker 1: People said he did it, so let's pinot on him.
Speaker 1: I think that was too easy of a mote of
Speaker 1: it for it. And yeah, it does bother me if
Speaker 1: Grady material was withheld from him. Look, I'm not anti prosecutors,
Speaker 1: believe me, but I have a problem with the way
Speaker 1: evidence is presented that the prosecutor can determine what evidence
Speaker 1: the other side gets. I have a real problem with that.
Speaker 1: If there's evidence, for God's sake, show it period. Let's
Speaker 1: get a clear picture of what happened. Don't mess around
Speaker 1: with it. I don't care whether it's a death penalty
Speaker 1: case or an armed robbery. Show all the evidence, and
Speaker 1: you know you can't just have the snitch. You got
Speaker 1: to have something else besides the snitch and we're not
Speaker 1: doing that. Yeah, And all of the rulings since have
Speaker 1: said basically, whatever new evidence has been presented would not
Speaker 1: have changed the original verdict. It would not have changed
Speaker 1: the minds of the jurors. But how do we know.
Speaker 1: By the way, there's no physical evidence tying any of
Speaker 1: the five men who are on death row to any
Speaker 1: of the crimes. But everything came down to snitch testimony,
Speaker 1: and like every single person who testified against Keith got
Speaker 1: some sort of deal, shortened players and sentenced better sell
Speaker 1: depending upon how you perform, you get a better work detail, etc. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's why I'm concerned with snitch testimony. In twenty eleven,
Speaker 1: the Ohio Supreme Court, in conjunction with the Ohio Bar Association,
Speaker 1: asked for a joint task force to review the administration
Speaker 1: of Ohio's death penalty. In twenty fourteen, the task force,
Speaker 1: made up of twenty three members, which included prosecutors, judges,
Speaker 1: defense attorneys, law enforcement legislators, and law professors, submitted their
Speaker 1: report and recommendations. Of the fifty six recommendations, numbers seventeen
Speaker 1: and eighteen are of particular interest. Number seventeen recommends making
Speaker 1: a law that a death sentence cannot be considered or
Speaker 1: imposed unless the state has either biological evidence or DNA
Speaker 1: evidence that links the defendant to the act of murder,
Speaker 1: a videotaped voluntary interrogation and confession of the defendant to
Speaker 1: the murder, or a video recording that conclusively links the
Speaker 1: defendant to the murder. Number eighteen recommends they not permit
Speaker 1: a death sentence where the state relies on jailhouse informant
Speaker 1: testimony that is not independently corroborated at the guilt innocence
Speaker 1: phase of the death penalty trial. These two recommendations were
Speaker 1: never adopted by the Ohio legislature. Here's Senator Nicki Antonio.
Speaker 1: I was asked to serve on that commission at some point,
Speaker 1: and I respectfully declined because I was told from the
Speaker 1: beginning that what was not on the table was an
Speaker 1: end to the death penalty. And I said, well, if
Speaker 1: that's not on the table, I appreciate all of the
Speaker 1: other work that's being done, but as long as that's there,
Speaker 1: that's the key element to me of where there are
Speaker 1: inequities and where there are problems with this system. By
Speaker 1: the way back in two thousand and five, the American
Speaker 1: Bar Association recommended that in death penalty cases, no prosecution
Speaker 1: should occur based solely an uncorroborated jailhouse informant testimony, and
Speaker 1: that quote, no person should lose liberty or life based
Speaker 1: solely on the testimony of such a witness. I continue
Speaker 1: my conversation with state Representative Jean Schmidt about why there
Speaker 1: is an unofficial temporary hold on executions in Ohio. You know,
Speaker 1: we can't get the drug that was out there for
Speaker 1: many years because the pharmaceutical company will not give it
Speaker 1: to us to kill people. So a few years ago,
Speaker 1: a law was passed to allow compounding pharmacies and doctors
Speaker 1: to be anonymous and get immunity so that they can't
Speaker 1: get prosecuted. The doctor to write the script, and the
Speaker 1: compounding pharmacy to create the product. Well, they did that
Speaker 1: and it didn't work out so well. It violated the
Speaker 1: Eighth Amendment. So we don't have a drug out there. Now.
Speaker 1: Technically you could shoot them or hang them, but I
Speaker 1: have a strange feeling the people of Ohio aren't gonna
Speaker 1: like either, even those advocates of death row. That's a
Speaker 1: very ruesome way to end somebody's life, and I all
Speaker 1: think so think it as racial overtones because when you
Speaker 1: think of what the slaves had to go through, it
Speaker 1: was either hanging or shooting. So when you have a
Speaker 1: larger population of people of color, people of color whose
Speaker 1: ancestors may or may not have been of slaves, that
Speaker 1: brings up a whole racial undertone that I don't think
Speaker 1: is acceptable to the public. So the governor said fix it, Well,
Speaker 1: there is no fix except to end it. Would you
Speaker 1: agree that it's hypocritical for a state to take someone's
Speaker 1: life when they say you're not allowed to take someone's life, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is. It is hypocritical, but it's more more immoral
Speaker 1: to do that. Do we have the right to take
Speaker 1: a life? Do we have a right to take a
Speaker 1: life at conception? Do we have a right to take
Speaker 1: a life at natural death? Over the years, there have
Speaker 1: been some small legislative victories in the fight towards ending
Speaker 1: the death penalty in Ohio, like banning it for defendants
Speaker 1: who are severely mentally ill at the time of the offense.
Speaker 1: But where does things stand today? Here's Senator Nicky Antonio.
Speaker 1: We had a lot of momentum earlier last year where
Speaker 1: we really thought we were moving towards really ending in
Speaker 1: the death penalty. That there are two bills. There's a
Speaker 1: bill in the House and a bill in the Senate.
Speaker 1: This time, for the very first time, we have joint
Speaker 1: sponsors on both bills. That's significant because when you have
Speaker 1: the lead sponsors as a Republican and a Democrat working
Speaker 1: in tandem in the state of Ohio, that means a lot.
Speaker 1: And so we have that in both the House and
Speaker 1: the Senate. But here's the kicker. If the bill is
Speaker 1: one day past, it would not be retroactive. It would
Speaker 1: only effect future cases, so Keith and all the others
Speaker 1: on Ohio's death row would not be able to benefit
Speaker 1: from it. In the meantime, the clock is ticking because
Speaker 1: in Ohio, if we don't get a bill passed in
Speaker 1: the two year cycle of that General Assembly, we have
Speaker 1: to start all over again in the next one. The
Speaker 1: bill was not passed as of the end of twenty
Speaker 1: twenty two, so time officially ran out. A new two
Speaker 1: year cycle began January first of twenty twenty three and
Speaker 1: will expire December thirty feet of twenty twenty four, So
Speaker 1: where does Republican Governor Mike Dwine stand on whether or
Speaker 1: not he'll sign the bill into law. So it's been
Speaker 1: really interesting because numerous times I think people have gone
Speaker 1: to Governor Dwine and asked him, what would you do
Speaker 1: if the bill gets passed? Will you sign it? Will
Speaker 1: you let it go for word? And he's been noncommittal.
Speaker 1: I've reached out to Governor DeWine's office with requests for
Speaker 1: an interview, but have yet to hear back. Every time
Speaker 1: we talk about the inability to actually complete an execution,
Speaker 1: someone throws out all these barbaric ways of executing someone,
Speaker 1: and again, I don't believe that's the answer. I think
Speaker 1: the answer is to stop doing it. Do you have
Speaker 1: high hopes that Ohio will be the twenty fourth state
Speaker 1: to abolish the death penalty? Yes? I do. It's the
Speaker 1: right thing. I truly believe that we will get this resolved,
Speaker 1: hopefully this year, because it's the right thing to do
Speaker 1: for Keith. With every passing day he marches closer to
Speaker 1: a scheduled execution date. Who knows, this might be my
Speaker 1: last shill on this earth. But until that time, you know,
Speaker 1: I tend to keep living My team to leave it
Speaker 1: all on the courts, as they say, next time, I'm
Speaker 1: the Real Killer. I believe that Keith is not guilty.
Speaker 1: He wanted to go to trial because he was naive,
Speaker 1: he was young, and he believed in the American justice system,
Speaker 1: and he was punished for that. Keith has a serious
Speaker 1: message for his punishers. But if and when my time comes,
Speaker 1: they will know that how I feel about them in
Speaker 1: this bullshit system. I'm not gonna, you know, play the
Speaker 1: meek role, you know, the you know, the forgiving slaves.
Speaker 1: Won't be able to go home and put your kids
Speaker 1: in the bid because you're gonna have to murder me.
Speaker 1: You have to murder somebody when that day comes. That's
Speaker 1: on everything I love, On everything I love. Who have
Speaker 1: the murder pain? Please check out at the Real Killer
Speaker 1: on Instagram for some never before seen photos and documents. Also,
Speaker 1: if you're so inclined, leave us a five star review.
Speaker 1: Reviews increased the odds that other listeners like you will
Speaker 1: find us. The Real Killer is a production of AYR
Speaker 1: Media and iHeartRadio, hosted by me Leah Rothman. Executive producers
Speaker 1: Leah Rothman and Eliza Rosen for AYR Media. Written by
Speaker 1: Leah Rothman, Executive producer, Paulina Williams, Senior Associate producer, Jill Pasheznik.
Speaker 1: Coordinators George Famm and Melina Kryski. Editing and sound design
Speaker 1: by Cameron Taggy, mixed and mastered by Cameron Taggy, Audio
Speaker 1: engineering by Matt Jacobson Studio and peering by Jay Brannon.
Speaker 1: Legal counsel for AYR Media. Gianni Douglas, executive producer for iHeartRadio,
Speaker 1: Maya Howard