As the Rodney Hinton Jr. case begins to get underway in court, we now know that it will be a death penalty case.Hinton, 38, stands accused of killing Hamilton County Sheriff's Deputy Larry Henderson on May 2 with his car near the University of Cincinnati's campus.Prosecutors allege the act was done as retaliation for the death of Hinton's son, 18-year-old Ryan Hinton, who was shot and killed by police the day before.The elder Hinton now stands accused by Hamilton County prosecutors of one count of aggravated murder, the only crime punishable by death in the state of Ohio.However, recent history shows that it is much easier said than done to successfully convict someone of aggravated murder in a death penalty case, and then proceed to successfully carry out that sentence in the state of Ohio.As of May 2025, 113 different people remain on death row in Ohio, and the last execution performed by the state was carried out in 2018.All 113 were convicted of aggravated murder. This includes 11 different people who remain on death row for death sentences that were handed down in Hamilton County courtrooms as far back as 1985.The full list of death row inmates convicted in Hamilton County, as well as the year of their sentencing, can be found below. Inmate listings are from the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, while the sentencing dates come from the Ohio Attorney General's Office.Derrick L. Cook (sentenced to death in 1990)Jerome Henderson (sentenced to death in 1985)Gary Hughbanks (sentenced to death in 1998)Anthony Kirkland (sentenced to death in 2018)Lee Moore (sentenced to death in 1994)James D. O'Neal (sentenced to death in 1995)Mark Pickens (sentenced to death in 2010)Walter L. Raglin (sentenced to death in 1996)Martin J. Rojas (sentenced to death in 1988)James Were (sentenced to death in 2003)Jeffrey A. Wogenstahl (sentenced to death in 1993)The data from the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction shows that no one has been handed down the death penalty within Hamilton County since 2018, when serial killer Anthony Kirkland was convicted of murdering four different people on separate occasions between 2006 and 2009.Meanwhile, the last statewide execution in Ohio was also performed in 2018, when Robert J. Van Hook of Cincinnati was sentenced to death in 1985. Van Hook was convicted of murdering a man at his Hyde Park apartment after meeting him just hours before at a gay bar.This stay in executions is primarily due to a challenge in obtaining the drugs necessary for lethal injections, the primary method of execution performed across Ohio and the U.S. as a whole. Many pharmaceutical companies that provide the drugs have become more reluctant to sell them to state corrections departments in recent years for executions, leading some states to rely upon more traditional execution methods or even devise alternative methods of capital punishment altogether. Many others, like Ohio, have simply stopped performing executions.The occurrence of police officers being intentionally murdered in the line of duty in the Greater Cincinnati area is a relatively rare occurrence. However, since 2018, the most similar parallel to the Hinton Jr. trial may be that of Terry Blankenship, who pleaded guilty to intentionally hitting and killing Springdale police officer Kaia Grant on Interstate 275 with his truck in 2020.Blankenship's case began as a death penalty case. However, Blankenship ultimately took a plea deal to take the application of capital punishment off the table. He is now serving a life sentence.Another similar case out of Clermont County from 2019 of a man accused of shooting and killing a Clermont County sheriff's deputy also began as a death penalty case before the suspect in that case ultimately pleaded guilty to avoid the death penalty.If Hinton does not take a plea deal and he were to be found guilty of the aggravated murder charge, it would ultimately be up to a jury on whether to recommend a death sentence to the trial's presiding judge, Tyrone Yates. Yates could then use his discretion on whether to impose a death sentence. Yates could not impose a death sentence unless a jury were to recommended it.Hinton pleaded not guilty to the charge earlier this week. In court, his attorney did not dispute that Hinton killed Henderson, but argued instead that Hinton is not guilty of the charge of aggravated murder because Hinton's mental illness caused him to not be in the right frame of mind to make rational decisions at the time he killed Henderson.Hinton's inmate listing with the Hamilton County Justice Center shows that he is next due in court on Monday, May 12.