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State lawmakers clash over the plan to make it harder to amend the Constitution before a reproductive rights amendment might come to voters this fall.

It was 30 years ago here at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility that there was a riot that lasted 11 days.

It changed history and it's changed how the state is doing business in prisons now.

We'll have more on that on this week's state of Ohio and welcome to the state of Ohio.

I'm Karen Kasler.

30 years ago this week, one of the longest prison riots in US history finally ended after 11 days.

400 inmates from three gangs at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville held that prison for nearly two weeks.

And when the siege was over, one guard and nine inmates were dead.

State House correspondent Joe Ingles takes a look back at the riot and its lasting impact.

No, I thought I was going to die.

I mean, as is that simple.

There was quite a few times throughout the riot that there's situations in development that were occurring that I thought I would not make it out.

It took a long time really to dawn on us.

I mean, all of us.

I'd say that this is a full scale, right?

Trouble began on Easter Sunday as simmering tensions erupted over a new warden with new rules tuberculosis tests containing alcohol which upset Muslim inmates and severe overcrowding.

You know, we had probably double the capacity of a maximum security prison the way it was constructed.

It was more like a medium security physical plant than a maximum security one.

There was too much movement for persons who were that high risk.

Jamadi was a reporter for TV station W.H.O.

in Dayton.

Because of all that came before the riot.

Lucasville was like a powder keg with so much pressure, and it just took one spark to set it off.

Mike Hensley hid in a stairwell, but was taken hostage by prisoners, as was guard Darrell Clarke.

There's not a day that don't go by that I don't think about this.

I mean, there's there's no way a person could they want to kill somebody.

But they just couldn't make up their mind.

Which one?

The rioters also took other prisoners hostage.

Over the 11 day siege.

Nine inmates and one guard were killed.

I can report to you.

It's everyone here.

I can't report to you that a sixth inmate body has been recovered.

We have not notified the next of kin.

I'm freaking out.

You know, you've got a brother down there and what is going on?

You know?

And now those are some hard days.

Jackie Bower's brother, George Scates, was one of the inmates inside.

He'd been sent to Lucasville for a murder in 1982.

Scates was one of the so-called Lucasville five, the ringleaders.

Scates served as the spokesman for inmates on a broadcast that aired during the riot on a local radio station.

Because we are not going to bow down.

We are not going to give up.

We are going to remain.

No matter what they put on us.

If we die, we die.

Meanwhile, state leaders were handling the riot from Columbus.

Current Governor Mike DeWine was then Governor George Voinovich as lieutenant governor and served as the point person during the ordeal.

You know, it's a unique situation because when you look at it from a communication point of view, the prisoners, you know, were listening to the radio, the prisoners were getting TV.

And so anything that was was put out, you know, they they got.

And then, you know, very quickly, this turns into a negotiation with hostages.

And the goal, the prime goal, really the goal was to save lives and to, you know, be able to protect the lives of everybody in there.

As the riot dragged on, National Guard members were brought in to join the state troopers and other law enforcement.

Yeah, I spent, you know, 16 hours a day, although as the riot became older and in terms of number of days, the prisoners actually established a schedule.

And so like at 6:00, they wouldn't negotiate anymore.

They were done for the day.

And so that was kind of interesting to watch them get into a pattern.

The FBI had very sophisticated listening equipment that they had drilled up into the floor of the room where they were doing the negotiations from so we could hear what was being said when they weren't negotiating.

And even after corrections officer Bobby the landing, Hamm was strangled by inmates and his body was thrown into the recreation yard.

Storming the prison was not something state leaders were willing to do.

There was a tremendous amount of pressure, as you remember, to storm the prison.

And particularly after officer of landing ham died.

You know, you can imagine people in not just in the community, but, you know, throughout the state were demanding that, you know, we go in and, you know, the governor, to his credit, resisted that and stayed focused on how do we protect the lives, how do we save the most lives.

I think if you look at other examples where there's a storming of a prison, those are very high risk situations as far as the deaths of the of the hostages.

Journalist from around the country descended on the prison, joining the ones who had been camped there since the beginning and under pressure from their outlets, were frenetic, looking for updates to report.

Because not much information came from official sources.

We tried, we tried and tried.

We tried to get whatever we could see from different angles.

John Remi, former reporter for TV and radio in Columbus, found an unusual angle.

I climbed a tree one afternoon for the 3:00 news and people are laughing at me.

Oh, Remi, what are you doing up there?

And I got up there and started.

I was able to see in to the grounds of the penitentiary, and I was starting to get a little bit of better view of things.

And all of a sudden, I wasn't so crazy.

And there were people trying the same thing.

People in the neighborhood near and far started to come and tell us what they had heard through the grapevine of what was going on inside the prison, through the corrections officers who were going to work.

A lot of that was not accurate.

There were rumors.

A lot of rumors.

The media blackout helped fuel inflated numbers of dead prisoners.

Terrible stories of torture and other false reports.

The lawyer negotiating for the inmates said they believed the state had planted the stories.

In hindsight, DeWine suggested the prisons department should have given the media more careful information.

So I think probably, you know, having the director out there, maybe even having the warden out out there talking to the press every day still would have been extremely careful in what they said.

But that probably would have dealt with some of the rumors.

After 11 long days, negotiations paid off.

The inmates surrendered on a long seven hour live broadcast on a Cincinnati area TV station.

A few days later, reporters began to survey the damage inside.

I was the TV pool reporter.

I had a photographer were allowed in.

Imagine anything and everything that wasn't bolted down was tossed out of all of the cells and piled up in the common areas.

Everything was destroyed.

Radios and TVs, those were broken.

Everybody's personal belongings, their books and photos.

Families scrap albums were tossed around everywhere.

I remember walking down a hallway and seeing written in.

It might have been paint, it might have been blood.

In big letters, convict unity added chill went through me.

The disturbance, in some respects was a wake up call, not just for the Department of Corrections, but for the state of Ohio.

State leaders say the lessons learned here three decades ago at Lucasville are still having an impact on Ohio's prison system.

Probably the biggest thing that took place following the riot was a reconstruction of all of the cell blocks.

For example, the correctional officer station was among the inmates.

Previously, we built a new and closed of stations for them with escape hatches.

Know following that, they could go up through the ceiling to escape if a disturbance did take place.

We had new rules regarding movement and classification of persons.

Cynthia Davis is now the warden at Lucasville.

She says there's no more double bunking and cells.

And she says there is a focus on programs now, recognizing that of the 21,000 incarcerated people who leave Ohio prisons each year, about two dozen of them are leaving Lucasville every month.

We have recovery service programs.

We have Sinclair College has been implemented here.

We do the GED programs, we do decision points, just cognitive behavioral programing, you know, to help the individuals deal with some of their thinking.

Inmates have painted murals in the Reading Nook area where small children visit with family members.

And unlike 1993, when inmates got to place one phone call to family members at Christmas time, they now get to make those calls more often.

300,000 calls were logged from the facility in March alone.

And inmates have painted a hallway in tribute to veterans who have served in a variety of ways through a variety of conflicts.

Hey, hey, hey.

Wow.

This year, a short ceremony was held in Lucasville to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the riot.

A wreath was laid to honor slain prison guard Robert Vine landing him.

His friend Darryl Logan, was one of the guards at the prison and was on the SWAT team during the riot.

He's getting ready to retire soon.

He says the prison is safer now and he thinks inmates are being treated better.

They're human beings.

I mean, they're just like us.

They just, you know, mistaken our behind bars and we're not.

And inmates convicted of being involved with the riot are serving extra time or have been sentenced to death, including Scates, who was found guilty of three riot related murders.

His sister maintains he's innocent and continues to fight for his freedom.

It hurts me to think that I'll never be able to go anywhere with my brother.

And, you know, like we were younger than I thought.

It.

And then he has to die for some one else, you know, that did it.

The disturbance in some respects was a wakeup call, not just for the Department of Corrections, but for the state of Ohio.

And guards that are hoping that wakeup call will be put into action.

That way, we don't relive the tragic, the death and destruction ever again, in my opinion.

It don't it just don't affect staff.

It affects their families.

It affects community, affects everybody.

Joe Ingles, Statehouse News Bureau.

The Lucasville five have all been sentenced to death for their roles in the riot.

The Southern Ohio Correctional Facility used to house condemned inmates since the death, house and execution chamber are there.

But that's not the case anymore.

Ever since Ohio resumed executions in 1999 after reinstating capital punishment, groups have worked to try to stop the death penalty.

I sat down this week with the leader of one of them.

So death row is no longer located at Lucasville.

It's been relocated actually three times since the riot, and now is most of the inmates are in Chillicothe.

Some of the inmates who participated in the Lucasville riot have been sentenced to death.

Why don't they deserve that sentence?

I mean, they killed a corrections officer.

They killed other inmates.

Yeah.

So I think that the Lucasville case really exemplifies how there can be too much doubt to go forward with an execution.

I just read an article where the prosecutor was talking about how they did their best.

Well, I don't think that that's a very high standard when we're talking about taking somebody's life.

We need to be 100% certain.

And the fact of the matter is, we can never be 100% certain, especially in a case like Lucasville, where there was so much chaos.

You know, technology was not what it was back then.

And so if we aren't certain that these people are culpable for the crime, we shouldn't be executing them.

What do you think the state learned from the riot when it comes specifically to the death penalty and people who are on death row?

I think that similar to what I said before, I think that we learned that accuracy is everything and we need to have all of the facts and really thoroughly investigate who who did these crimes.

And if we don't have all the facts, then we don't need to be pursuing the death penalty.

I think that there was a lot of public pressure on the prosecutors probably to maintain or to obtain a conviction and I don't think that they had all the facts before they pursued that conviction.

So in the end, that is echoed in the prosecutor's comments that I referred to.

So in the last couple of years, there's been some movement on the death penalty statute in Ohio.

You've had some high profile people come out against it, including former Justice Paul Pifer, who helped write it.

You've had other people, former Attorney General Jim Petro, others who have come out saying that they are concerned about how the death penalty is being applied.

And even current Attorney General Dave Yost said in his annual report that Ohio either needs to fix the death penalty system or stop using the death penalty and stop doing executions.

Your thoughts?

That's right.

Yeah, I would agree with Dave Yost that our death penalty is broken.

And I think the only thing that we disagree on is the solution.

You know, other states have tried to fix the death penalty.

Maryland in 2009, they really tried to narrow the statute and say, well, you know, only in cases where there's DNA or video evidence or three eyewitnesses is when we're going to pursue the death penalty.

And even then, they found that there was still arbitrary sentencing, there was still racial bias, there was still wrongful convictions.

So they ended up repealing the death penalty in 2013.

So I think that, you know, it's time for Ohio to stop wasting money, stop wasting resources and just abolish it.

We can we can save all that time and resources and just get rid of it.

And in fact, in Yost's annual report, he specifically cites the amount of money that is spent.

I think it's 158 inmates on death row.

Is that correct?

It's 128.

128 inmates on death row and at least $128 million, if not over $300 million being spent to house, feed and defend these folks because their cases do get appealed to the Ohio Supreme Court.

I want to ask you about the moratorium that's been proposed.

Senate Minority Leader Nikki Antonio has proposed this moratorium for the entirety of her legislative career.

But every year it seems like she gets every other year she gets more Republican support.

This time she's got State Senator Steve Huffman, the cousin of Senate President Matt Huffman, on board.

Do you have any hope that this time there will be movement and would actually potentially get out of committee?

Yes, we are very optimistic.

And I think one of the reasons why is because of that growing bipartisan support.

So Senate Bill 101, the bill that would abolish Ohio's death penalty, has the most bipartisan support of any death penalty repeal legislation in Ohio's history.

I think there are 12 co-sponsors and sponsors on that bill, which is already over a third of the Senate and Senate President Matt Huffman.

While he's not with us personally on the issue, has said he will not stand in the way of a vote.

So, yes, we are very optimistic that it will get out of committee this time.

What is bringing specifically Republicans on board?

I've heard it's the argument, the pro-life argument, but also the fiscal conservative argument is that is that what's bringing Republicans, though, they do face the pushback of, well, you're not being tough on crime.

Right.

I think that this is a matter of faith for a lot of people, not just Republicans, Democrats, too.

But I think that people are looking into their hearts.

And if they believe that life begins at birth or at conception and ends in natural death with no exceptions, then the death penalty is obviously at odds with that belief.

So I do think that faith and pro-life beliefs have a lot to do with that.

And I you're right.

The fiscal argument, right?

I mean, to think that we are spending all of this money on a system that is not a good return on our investment.

So we've had around 3400 capital indictments since 1981.

Less than 2% of those capital indictments have resulted in an execution.

So we've only had 56 executions in Ohio.

When we think about the millions and millions and millions of dollars that we've spent, are we really spending it on a program that's working?

No.

The numbers tell us that we're not getting the result that we were supposed to want.

98% of the time.

Prosecutors will push back and say we need the death penalty as a bargaining tool.

It helps us as we push forward on our cases.

And of course, there are cases where the death penalty is appropriate.

That's what prosecutors are said.

Yeah, And to that, I would say, you know, it's it's highly unethical for prosecutors to use a human life as a bargaining chip.

You know, 23 other states don't have the death penalty and they have no problem securing convictions.

They have no problem getting insight onto what happened during the course of a crime.

You know, our neighbors in Michigan haven't had a death penalty since 1846, and they have no problems.

And I'm and I have a lot of faith in our prosecutors here in Ohio that they'll be able to do the same.

And as far as this argument of the worst of the worst in some cases deserve the death penalty, I actually kind of find that pretty offensive because I think that all murders are the worst of the worst.

And I'm sure if you ask those families of those murder victims, they would tell you that their loss was the worst of the worst.

No matter what the circumstances were.

So I don't really buy into that.

I don't think that we should be stratifying loss.

And I think that life without parole is an extreme, harsh punishment.

And it is a it is appropriate for the highest punishment available on Ohio's books.

We haven't seen an execution in Ohio since 2018.

There have been no executions under Governor Mike DeWine, who took office in 2019.

And he has said, first of all, that he was not going to have executions go forward without a federal judge signing off on the procedure.

But also, he's had trouble getting the execution drugs because drug companies don't want their drugs used in lethal injections.

So he's turned it over to the legislature saying, if you want to continue with the death penalty, something's got to be done on the legal side.

Do you worry that it could go the other way, that legislators could find another method of execution and not pass the moratorium, but instead pass execution by some other method?

Well, if they want to pass some other method of execution, that's going to be a further waste of time and money.

So Alabama just built a gas chamber, so time and resources spent on that.

And Airgas, the company that supplies the nitrogen that's supposed to suffocate people to death, has refused to sell them the gas now.

So we're going to end up in the same problem.

Right.

And it's going to continue to take decades and decades and decades to win these courts to the appeals process and, you know, litigate all of the things around whatever method of execution that we end up choosing.

Right.

And so the smart thing to do here is just to end it.

That really is the solution here.

And we've seen it in other states, and it's time that Ohio joins them.

Also this week, Republican state lawmakers are moving closer to putting a measure to make it harder to amend Ohio's constitution.

On an August special election ballot, three months before a reproductive rights amendment is likely to be before voters.

While activists were watching to contravene official Republican backed House bills, a ban on trans athletes from playing girl sports and a ban on gender transition treatment for minors, which is rare but endorsed by major medical associations.

A Senate committee was hearing a resolution to require 60% voter approval to amend the Constitution.

And it was hearing a bill to allow a statewide vote on that in a special election in August.

So it would be in place before voters decide on an amendment on reproductive rights and abortion access expected in November.

The committee meeting was quiet and quick, lasting a minute and 47 seconds.

It wasn't so quiet in the House committee hearing its version of the 60% voter approval for amendments plan.

After 3 hours, but with dozens of people still lined up to testify, Republican Brian Stewart, the resolution sponsor, moved to vote on it.

Minority Leader Alison Russo objected, but Republican chair Phil Plummer called for a vote and the hearing room erupted.

One opponent was escorted out by security.

The resolution passed and Democratic committee members left clearly unhappy.

Then the two measures that passed the Senate committee 2 hours before it went to the floor.

In that chamber, the Senate's 60% voter approval resolution passed on a party line vote of 26 to 7.

But Republican Nathan Manning joined Democrats in voting against putting the resolution before voters in August.

Manning and all other Republican senators and all but one House Republican had voted in December to eliminate most August special elections.

That resolution would have to get a 3/5 majority in the House.

But it doesn't need a signature from Governor Mike DeWine to go to the ballot.

And then, if it does, a simple majority of voters statewide could decide that future constitutional amendments would need 60% of voters.

But DeWine would need to sign the August election bill.

Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose, who supports making it harder to amend the Constitution, says this needs to happen by May 10th for an August special election.

And that's it for this week for my colleagues at the Statehouse News Bureau of Ohio Public Radio and Television.

Thanks for watching.

Please check out our website at State News dot org and follow us and the show on Facebook and Twitter.

And please join us again next time for the state of Ohio.

Support for the statewide broadcast of the state of Ohio comes from medical mutual, providing more than 1.4 million Ohioans peace of mind with a selection of health insurance plans online at med mutual dot com slash Ohio by the law offices of Porter Wright, Morris and Arthur LLP.

Now with eight locations across the country, Porter Wright is a legal partner with a new perspective to the business community more at Porter Wright dot com and from the Ohio Education Association representing 124,000 members who work to inspire their students to think creatively and experience the joy of learning online at OHEA.org.