Jim Petro is a life-long Ohio civil servant: city councilman, county commissioner, state legislator, state Auditor, state Attorney General, and Chancellor of the Board of Regents. He served on the House Judiciary Subcommittee that crafted our death penalty statute in 1981. He advocated for passage of the bill then. Later, as Attorney General from 2003 to 2007, he oversaw 19 executions and reviewed many other death sentence cases. His work gave him an up-close view of our death penalty system in practice, which is much different from theory or intention. He learned that the death penalty is not meeting the standards it was adopted for, certainly not deterrence or cost-savings, and that the risk of error in imposing the death penalty on the innocent and/or undeserving, and the unequal application of the penalty outweighed its purported benefits. He views repeal as necessary. He was the first state Attorney General to work with an Innocence Project and received the Champion of Justice award from the Innocence Network. He and his wife Nancy authored “False Justice: Eight Myths that Convict the Innocent”. They now reside in Florida.
Nancy Petro co-authored the award-winning book “False Justice: Eight Myths that Convict the Innocent” with her husband Jim. She serves on the Advisory Board of the National Registry of Exonerations and is a regular contributor to online forums on innocence and miscarriages of justice. In past years she taught art, operated a graphic design firm, and engaged in extensive writing on varied topics. She met Jim at Dennison University, served on the University’s alumni advisory council, and continues to assist in alumni activities.