Sen. Michele Reynolds, R-Canal Winchester , represents Ohio’s 3rd senate district and is the vice chairperson of the senate judiciary committee. Reynolds is also on the host committee of the council of state governments midwestern legislative conference and the vice chair of the conference’s criminal justice and public safety committee .
Understandably, there are families, prosecutors and many of my colleagues in the Ohio General Assembly who believe execution equals justice. I believe there is a better way to deliver justice and punish those who commit the most heinous of crimes — by executing their freedom, not their lives.
In February of 1999, Wilford Berry Jr. became the first person executed in Ohio since 1963. He was known as the “Volunteer” because he understood that life in prison is another kind of death sentence – and to him it was far worse. Berry rejected attempts by the Death Penalty Division of the Ohio Public Defender’s Office to have him deemed mentally incompetent to make that decision.