No special session to ‘fix’ Oregon’s death penalty law, says Gov. Kate Brown

Gov. Kate Brown on Wednesday announced that she would not call a special session to address controversy over the state’s new aggravated murder statute that significantly narrows the crimes that could bring the death penalty in Oregon.

“While it is clear there is a misunderstanding regarding the intent of the words in Senate Bill 1013, it is also clear there is not sufficient support for a special session to pass a fix," she said in a statement issued by her office.

Oregon Governor Kate Brown today signed the legislative bill that changes some of the sentencing laws on the death penalty. Oregon currently has 30 inmates on its death row but has not had an execution in the past 22 years and has only had two executions in the past 57 years.

Oregon, with a moratorium on executions since November of 2011, declared by then-Governor John Kitzhaber and continued by current Governor Kate Brown is one of the many states that have a death penalty but do not use it. Twenty-two states have abolished their death penalty altogether.

Gazette Times: Editorial: Legislature goes almost all the way on death penalty

Jul 3, 2019 It was probably inevitable, considering the dramatic way that the last couple of weeks of the legislative session played out. With so much focus on the Republican senators' walkout and the death of the cap-and-trade bill, a number of relatively high-profile measures were passed that normally would have earned more attention.