Ohio's death penalty delays mock justice

By Mark R. Weaver
Former Ohio Deputy Attorney General
Guest columnist

The state prisons agency announced Monday that Ohio will test lethal injection drugs ahead of executions if it obtains specialty batches of the drugs, in its latest update of capital punishment rules.

A case handed down last week reminds us that justice delayed can mean justice destroyed. On August 4, 1988, Amanda Maher was found lying on abandoned railroad tracks in Xenia, gasping for air. She was mostly naked, and a railroad spike had been driven through her temple. Three rocks had been shoved into her vaginal cavity. She’d been strangled. Her injuries were so severe that a police officer who knew her didn’t recognize her face.

She was 300 yards from where an officer had last seen her, walking with David Lee Myers.

When police questioned Myers, he lied about where he’d last seen Amanda. Her wallet was hidden in Myers’ car. A fellow inmate later testified that Myers bragged about inserting rocks into a woman and explained that a railroad spike won’t penetrate a forehead but will go through the temple, details police hadn’t yet publicly released.

A jury convicted Myers of aggravated murder in 1996 and recommended death. The trial court agreed. On direct appeal, an Ohio appellate court found the evidence of his guilt "overwhelming."

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That should be the end of the story. It isn’t.

A case that should be closed

As of now − 38 years after Amanda Maher’s murder and 30 years after his conviction − Myers is alive and still litigating. His case has generated at least seven reported court opinions. In one aspect of his federal appeal alone, years passed with essentially nothing happening.

Meanwhile, Amanda Maher’s family waits.

No reasonable person disputes that capital cases need rigorous review. When the state seeks to take a life, every safeguard matters. But constitutional due process doesn’t require 38 years of procedural wandering, and decency does not demand that a victim’s loved ones grow old waiting for a judicial system to finish what it started.

Where accountability breaks down

When I served as Deputy Attorney General of Ohio, under the leadership of Attorney General Betty Montgomery, our team identified dozens of examples of judges being complicit in delaying death penalty cases for no good reason. I helped draft the first public report that called out the cases and responsible parties by name.

At our urging, lawmakers made such disclosure mandatory for all future attorneys general, and current AG Dave Yost released the latest report. It shows death row inmates wait an average of 23 years before an execution date is even scheduled. And I’ve seen from personal experience that, even when a date is set, the appeals and creative legal filings delay it for many more years. We’ve not had an execution since 2018, and there’s none on the horizon.

That means 113 killers − one of whom I helped prosecute − snicker and chortle on death row. They know they’re more likely to die of natural causes than the capital punishment they so richly deserve.

The problem is not that killers like Myers have too many rights. The problem is that nobody in the system is required to move. Motions sit for years without rulings, with no explanation from the underworked federal judges who are tasked with moving them along expeditiously. No mechanism forces a judge sitting on a capital case motion to explain why it hasn’t been decided or to commit to a timeline for doing so.

That must change.

Fixing the system

State and federal court rules should be amended to require any judge who has not ruled on a pending motion in a capital case for more than one year to publish the reasons for the delay and file a plan to resolve it within another year.

Lawyers face deadlines every day. The notion that a judge should be able to sit on a life or death motion for years without accountability is an indulgence the system can no longer afford.

When capital cases stretch across decades, everyone loses. Victims’ families are denied closure, and taxpayers fund an endless carousel of appointed lawyers, expert witnesses, and court proceedings. And the public loses faith that the justice system means what it says.

Amanda Maher was 26 years old when she died on those railroad tracks. Had she lived, she’d be 64 today. Her case has now consumed more years in litigation than she spent alive. That timeline is not justice − it’s a system mocking itself.

The best reforms don’t require new laws. They require something simpler: making judges explain themselves when they haven’t acted and giving them a deadline to finish. Courts that demand punctuality from every lawyer who walks through their doors ought to hold themselves to the same standard.

This column also appeared in The Cincinnati Enquirer. It is used here with the author's permission. Mark R. Weaver is the former Deputy Attorney General of Ohio and author of the new children’s book “God Bless America: 250 Years Strong.” On X: @MarkRWeaver