I read Kyle Kirker’s op-ed “Schmidt wrong to put convicts above victims” and as someone who lost a loved one to murder, I can tell you that Mr. Kirker is extremely wrong in his assessment of HB 183 and the abolition of Ohio’s death penalty.
I applaud Rep. Jean Schmidt and her efforts to abolish the death penalty because I know firsthand the pain the death penalty causes the families of victims. When my father was murdered in 2017, I quickly learned that the needs of victims’ families are ignored. I was told I was ineligible to receive state-provided burial help and counseling support for my father’s murder because he had drugs in his system at the time of his death. I was then told that the state would spend millions of dollars seeking death for the person who killed him. How is that justice for my family? What if we invested those millions of dollars in badly needed resources for the families of victims?