This series consists of the death penalty files kept by the Legal Division of the office of Governor Bob Taft as part of the governor's statutory responsibilities to grant or deny clemency or commutation for death row prisoners. Files include the inmate's clemency petition, the report of clemency hearing by the Adult Parole Authority and Department of Rehabilitation and Correction files used for the hearing, information prepared by the County Prosecutor and/or the Attorney General for the clemency hearing, trial transcripts, memoranda written by the Legal Division, Adult Parole Authority (APA), and Attorney General's Office; correspondence written to and from the Governor's Office in regard to the case; and the action taken by the governor. The series includes case files of twenty inmates who were executed, one who was granted clemency, and three who remained on death row at the end of Governor Taft's administration. Case files of Jay D. Scott, the first Ohio prisoner to be involuntarily executed since 1963, includes several folders of international and United States letters sent to the governor in protest of the death penalty. Affidavits describing the process of performing lethal injections in Ohio are included with a 2003 complaint filed by inmates John Glenn Roe and Lewis. Jerome Campbell is the only inmate represented in the files whose death sentence was commuted to life without parole.
