News

Gov. Kitzhaber: Your Job Is Not Yet Done

National death penalty scholar Charles Ogletree gives his views on Oregon's death penalty relative to the resignation of Governor John Kitzhaber.

Read the Huffingpost article here: Gov. Kitzhaber: Your Job Is Not Yet Done.

Oregon is One of 26 States that Do Not Use Death Penalty

Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: December 17, 2014
(SALEM, Oregon) Death sentences in Oregon declined in 2014, with only one new death sentence this year. This single sentence represents a 42% decline over the last ten years. According to the 2014 Death Penalty report, issued today by the Death Penalty Information Center, in Washington DC, nationwide, there were 72 new death sentences in 2014, a 40-year low.

Federal Judge Strikes Down California's Death Penalty

Federal Judge Strikes Down California's Death Penalty
A federal judge has ruled that California's death penalty system is unconstitutional.   U.S. District Judge Cormac J. Carney handed down an order Wednesday, finding that the system is arbitrary and in violation of the Constitution's 8th Amendment.  

Six reasons why support for capital punishment is evaporating: Slate opinion

Will Saletan Opinion - Support for Capital Punishment is Evaporating

By William Saletan, on June 19, 2014 at 5:03 AM

WASHINGTON — For 40 years American politicians have assumed that favoring the death penalty is a winning political position. Is that era coming to an end? Is support for capital punishment, like opposition to gay marriage, evaporating?

We can't be sure. But we're seeing the first signs that it could happen.

Oregon Should Abolish the Death Penalty

Convicted killer Gary Haugen was sentenced to death in 2007, but Gov. John Kitzhaber has refused to carry out the penalty.



On behalf of Oregonians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, let me respond to Oregonian reporter Bryan Denson's April 30 article criticizing OADP's participation in the recent Oregonian poll about the death penalty. First, thank you to The Oregonian for providing a forum for discussing the death penalty in Oregon. Gov. John Kitzhaber called for a vigorous statewide debate on this issue, and that is what OADP is trying to promote. We welcome the participation of all Oregonians, whatever their views, and we appreciate The Oregonian's help. We will, of course, continue to make our views known through all available avenues, including The Oregonian’s poll. We are not trying to silence anyone else from making their views known and fully expect death penalty proponents will do so as well. The fact is, the death penalty is a wasteful and ineffective response to violent crime. We believe that when Oregonians understand this, they will choose to replace it with life in prison without possibility of parole as the most serious sanction for murder. Six other states have done so in the last few years (New York, New Jersey, New Mexico, Illinois, Connecticut and Maryland), bringing the total of states without the death penalty to 18.

Death Penalty Will Never Be Risk-Free

Frank Thompson is a retired prison superintendent from the Oregon Department of Corrections

By Frank Thompson, a retired prison superintendent from the Oregon Department of Corrections.
Because of the moratorium that Gov. John Kitzhaber declared, the gruesome events that unfolded during the execution of Clayton Lockett in Oklahoma did not happen here. But for our governor's bold leadership, it could have. Oklahoma officials injected Mr. Lockett with a "newly tried" cocktail of drugs that caused him to "writhe and gasp" and cry out in pain minutes after he'd been declared unconscious. At one point, he "tried to rise [from the table] and exhaled loudly," prompting prison officials to pull a curtain in front of witnesses. An execution that should have taken little more than 10 minutes was stretched to an agonizing 43 minutes and ended with Mr. Lockett dying of a massive heart attack. Our constitution requires that, if a state wishes to use the death penalty, we must guarantee that it is not cruel punishment. And for good reason.

Oregon Supreme Court Upholds Death Penalty Case

Oregon's Supreme Court has upheld the death penalty in a case involving the 2004 murder of an African immigrant.

Oregon's Supreme Court has upheld the death penalty in a case involving the 2004 murder of an African immigrant. The ruling comes as capital punishment faces increased scrutiny nationwide after a botched execution by lethal injection in Oklahoma. Oregon's highest court upheld the conviction and death sentence of Michael Washington. The Gresham, Ore. man is on death row for the killing of Mohamed Jabbie, a West African immigrant.
After Michael Washington's 2010 murder conviction, he claimed he wasn't given a fair trial. Among other things, he said Oregon's system of lethal injection violates the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment. The justices turned aside that argument. But it doesn't mean Washington will face execution any time soon. Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber has imposed a moratorium on the death penalty while he's in office.

Lane County jury sentences David Ray Taylor to death for 2012 killing

Lane County Circuit Judge Charles Zennache reads the jury verdicts

EUGENE — A Lane County jury has agreed that a Eugene man who's twice been convicted of killings should be executed. The jury reached its decision Thursday in the case of 58-year-old David Ray Taylor, convicted last week in the 2012 killing of Celestino Gutierrez. Prosecutors said Gutierrez was killed so that his car could be used as a getaway vehicle in a bank robbery a few hours after he was killed. Taylor previously served 27 years for the killing of a young Eugene woman in 1977. He was released in 2004. Prosecutors said the killing of Gutierrez was done at Taylor's home, and he planned it along with younger associates, one of whom posed as a stranded woman in a bar parking lot and asked Gutierrez for a ride. After Gutierrez was killed, his body was dismembered and buried in a forest southwest of Eugene, The Register-Guard reported. "This is a rare, extreme case, and exactly what the death penalty was intended for," Lane County Deputy District Attorney David Schwartz told the jury.

Jury decides in favor of death penalty for Robert Langley

A 12-person jury unanimously ruled in favor of the death penalty Wednesday in the case of a man originally convicted of murder in 1989. Robert Langley, 54, listened as Marion County Circuit Judge Mary James read the jury's response to whether he deserved the death penalty for the torture-murder of Anne Gray. In December 1987, Langley bound and strangled Gray. He buried her body in a muddy hole behind a North Salem house where his aunt once lived. Four months later, Langley used a baseball bat to bludgeon to death Larry Rockenbrant in a garage on state hospital grounds. A prosecutor later told a jury that Langley and Rockenbrant knew each other and that Langley had told him about Gray's murder. Langley then killed Rockenbrant to keep him silent.

Retired Oregon prisons official tells painful story of his changing view of death penalty

Retired Oregon prison official tells painful story of his changing view of death penalty

May 13, 2014 Randy Geer will tell a story tonight to a gathering of death-penalty foes in Eugene. It's a personal tale of anguish, and of shifting views on capital punishment. A story he waited until he retired to tell publicly. Geer, who recently ended a 31-year career in the Oregon Department of Corrections, is one of the rare people personally wounded by lawful and unlawful killing. Read More at http://www.oregonlive.com/politics/index.ssf/2014/05/former_oregon_priso...

Pages

 

Follow Us on Twitter

 

Follow Us on Google+

 

Watch OADP's Videos

Vimeo