Ohio poised to continue to be a national leader in executions

One notable aspect of the modern death penalty is the concentration of executions in Texas and other southern states (as detailed in this DPIC chart).  However, Ohio has been a recent outlier, with 20 execution over the last five years.  And this new AP article suggests that Ohio is poised to continue its leading role in national execution realities:

Ohio has between 15 and 20 inmates who have exhausted their appeals and are probably eligible — or "ripe" in the language of attorneys — for an execution date, according to both the State Public Defender's Office and the Ohio Attorney General.

The number is unprecedented for a state that has executed 28 inmates since 1999 but which still has a majority of its original death row inmates behind bars.  There are 177 men and two women currently on death row. "We haven't had this kind of situation in Ohio before where we've had this many cases all ripe," Matt Kanai, head of the Attorney General's capital crimes unit, said Monday.

I suspect that even most death penalty activists are not fully aware of Ohio's new leading role in the modern application of capital punishment in the United States.  In addition, these development are especially interesting against the backdrop of the state's evolution from red to blue in the last few elections.