The surprise House vote last week to require a study of Ohio's death penalty system reflected both a national debate over moral values as well as old-fashioned legislative maneuvering.

The bill by Rep. Shirley Smith, a Cleveland Democrat, collected dust in Republican-controlled committees the past four years. Then Rep. Tom Brinkman, a conservative Cincinnati Republican, unexpectedly tried adding it to an unrelated bill on criminal sentencing.

The ploy by Brinkman, a Roman Catholic who opposes abortion and capital punishment, gathered enough last-minute Republican support to give it the votes needed to pass.

The vote could reflect the conversation about moral values during the just concluded election, said Doug Berman, an Ohio State University law professor who studies the death penalty.

Exit polls on Election Day showed that people ranked moral values as the issue most affecting their vote for president. Those values included positions on gay marriage, abortion and stem cell research.

''The conversation is, 'We're going to get serious about a culture of life,''' said Berman. ''Well, this is part and parcel of a culture of life.''

Add the death penalty to that conversation for another factor that explains what happened, said James Canepa, Ohio's chief deputy attorney general of criminal justice.

''Capital punishment is one of those issues like abortion, like war, that gets people thinking about what their moral values are,'' Canepa said.

Publicity about problems with capital punishment elsewhere also may be affecting people's decisions, said Dan Coble, a Capital University law professor.

He pointed to former Illinois Gov. Jim Ryan's decision to empty that state's death row following revelations about wrongly accused inmates.

''A lot of people are looking around and saying, 'It could be the same in our state,''' Coble said.

In Ohio, Gov. Bob Taft has allowed the execution of 15 inmates, but commuted the sentence of Jerome Campbell last year because of evidence questions and what a jury didn't know about informants who helped convict him.

''The governor commuting that maybe brought a few little things home to roost,'' Brinkman said. ''People saying, 'You know, the governor has been pretty steadfast in letting these go along. He finds one that isn't good, maybe it does need to be studied.'''

In the past, Republicans also had feared that if they allowed the bill hearings it could be changed to include a moratorium on the death penalty, said James Tobin, associate director of the Catholic Conference of Ohio's Department of Social Concerns.

Instead, it was presented as an up or down vote on a bill to study the issue only, making it more palatable, he said.

That was the case for lawmakers like Rep. Charles Blasdel, an East Liverpool Republican who supports capital punishment but voted for the bill.

He said death penalty supporters ''should not be afraid'' to learn if ''it's being properly used.''

Andrew Welsh-Huggins covers state issues for the Columbus bureau of The Associated Press.