[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----PENN., OHIO, LA., COLO., CALIF., ORE.

[Rick Halperin]

March 17



PENNSYLVANIA:

Jurors mull death penalty in gun collection theft slaying



Jurors in western Pennsylvania are hearing testimony on whether a man convicted 
in a slaying 6 years ago should be executed or spend life in prison without 
possibility of parole.

The (Washington) Observer-Reporter reports that 24-year-old Brandon Wolowski 
was convicted of 1st-degree murder last week in the January 2013 killing of 
37-year-old Matthew Mathias during an attempt to steal a gun collection. A 
45-year-old woman was wounded.

(source: Associated Press)








OHIO:

DeWine not sure Ohio can come up with a constitutional execution method



Gov. Mike DeWine has directed his state prisons department to find a way to 
carry out an execution that doesn’t involve cruel and unusual punishment.

But when asked Friday if he is certain Ohio can come up with a way that doesn’t 
violate the Eighth Amendment, he took a long pause before responding.

“Well, I think I’m going to wait and see what [the Department of Rehabilitation 
and Correction] comes up with, first of all. They will come up with a 
protocol.”

And has the former county prosecutor and attorney general changed his views on 
the death penalty?

“It remains at this point the law of the state of Ohio and I’m not going to 
comment much at this point beyond that,” DeWine replied.

His comments came during a meeting with Dispatch editors and reporters 
following his budget rollout.

The governor has delayed four executions, and says he will postpone more if 
necessary to come up with a new, court-approved protocol.

The search for a new death method was sparked when a federal judge likened 
Ohio’s current 3-drug cocktail to waterboarding and injecting fire in the 
prisoner’s veins.

Part of the difficulty of developing a new protocol will be obtaining a lethal 
drug from manufacturers not inclined to allow their product to be used in 
executions.

“Looking forward, obviously DRC has got to consider as they put together a new 
protocol where they would get certain drugs. I assume that they will look at 
the difficulty of getting those drugs, as well,” he said.

(source: Akron Beacon Journal)








LOUISIANA:

Hiatus on Louisiana executions a travesty of justice; victimizes family members 
twice



Victimized twice. That’s what it must have felt like for family members who 
lost loved ones to violence who testified before the House Criminal Justice 
Committee last week. Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry, a Republican, 
orchestrated the hearing on the death penalty, inviting mostly victims' 
families. Louisiana has not carried out an execution since 2010.

“In Louisiana, death row doesn’t mean death row anymore. It’s been nine years 
since our last execution. For those of us that revere the rule of law and 
believe in justice, this is unacceptable. I suspect many of you feel the same,” 
Landry told families at the hearing.

Todd Wessinger is the perfect example of a death row inmate who should have 
been executed long ago. Wessinger shot and killed 2 employees at the now-closed 
Calendar's restaurant during a robbery in Baton Rouge 23 years ago. Wessinger 
also shot a 3rd employee in the back, but that worker survived. Wessinger's gun 
jammed when he tried to shoot a 4th employee in the head.

A psychiatrist testified Wessinger admitted to shooting at least three people. 
Eyewitnesses identified Wessinger as the shooter, and police recovered the 
murder weapon. Witnesses also testified Wessinger bragged about the shootings 
after the fact.

Stephanie Guzzardo, 27 at the time and restaurant manager, was one of 
Wessinger’s murder victims. Guzzardo’s father, Wayne Guzzardo, testified at 
last week’s hearing. He blames Gov. John Bel Edwards for being excuse-oriented 
when it comes to not taking action on executing Louisiana’s death row inmates.

“We miss Stephanie very much and think of her every day. The governor can say 
whatever he wants. He can blame whoever he wants. He can go behind every door 
he wants to, but the buck stops with him. He’s got to generate it,” said 
Guzzardo.

Edwards refuses to say whether he favors the death penalty. That does not sit 
well with Guzzardo.

“He’s never been transparent for us victims, never, and always pulling 
something we don’t know anything about. And where’s the justice for my daughter 
and the rest of these victims? It’s ridiculous,” said Guzzardo.

In another case 28 years ago, death row inmate Scott Jude Bourque severely 
injured Theresa Chataignier and killed her daughter, Charlotte Perry. Perry was 
an estranged girlfriend of Bourque.

“Louisiana law should not allow anyone under a sentence of death to have that 
sentence delayed for such an unusual amount of time,” said Chataignier.

And then there’s the case of death row inmate Nathaniel Code Jr. who terrorized 
and murdered four people in their Shreveport home almost 35 years ago. Albert 
Culbert Jr. lost his sister’s wife, a niece and brother in the shootings.

“After so many years, why is nothing being done?” Culbert Jr. asked the 
committee.

"Why are not the people who are sitting on death row, who have wronged our 
families, who have gone through the justice system, who have been found guilty 
of these heinous crimes, why are they not being executed?" said Landry.

New Orleans Rep. John Bagneris, a Democrat, seemed unmoved by the dramatic and 
heart-felt testimony from the families of murder victims at the hands of death 
row inmates. The House Criminal Justice Committee member claimed a life 
sentence is still a harsh punishment for those on death row.

“If you execute that person, you are just freeing them. You are freeing them 
from what they have done. Sitting in a jail cell is a punishment. It’s a heck 
of a punishment,” said Bagneris.

Edwards blames the nearly decade-long hiatus in Louisiana executions on 
pharmaceutical companies refusing to sell drug compounds required for lethal 
injections, the state’s only legal form of execution.

“The drugs are not available, and legislation has not passed to address 
concerns of drug companies or offer alternative forms of execution,” Edwards 
said.

But legislators can change the law and allow for other methods of execution. 
Other death penalty states executed 22 inmates last year. Landry says it’s time 
for the governor and legislators to act and bring back executions to Louisiana.

“I support the rule of law, and if the Legislature spells out whether it be by 
firing squad, hanging, lethal injection or gas,” Landry said.

(source: Dan Fagan, The Advocate)








COLORADO:

For Some Colorado Lawmakers, The Death Penalty Debate Is Personal



The death penalty, and whether to repeal it, is likely to be one of the 
weightiest topics Colorado's legislature will debate this session and advocates 
believe this is the best chance they've had in years to abolish it. It's on the 
legislative agenda across the country and California's Gov. Gavin Newsom last 
week put a moratorium on the death penalty.

Democrats, who are pushing for the repeal, hold the majority in the Colorado 
statehouse.

Yet, for Democratic state Sen. Rhonda Fields, the death penalty is not just a 
question of policy. Of the three men on death row in the state, two are there 
for the murder of her son Javad Marshall Fields and his fiancée, Vivian Wolfe. 
They were killed days before Javad was set to testify as a witness in a murder 
trial.

"It's just a part of my experience," Fields says. "It's a part of who I am as a 
lawmaker. It's a constant pain I live with every day. It's something that you 
... don't get over, you just live through."

And when it comes to repealing the death penalty, Fields will be voting against 
the majority of her party. As it's written, the bill would apply only to future 
cases, but the new Democratic governor, Jared Polis, told Colorado Public Radio 
he would take the bill's passing as a strong indication that those on death row 
should have their sentences commuted to life in prison.

"What kind of justice is that for Javad and Vivian who were doing their civic 
responsibility by cooperating with the police?" asks Fields. "Their whole 
future was ahead of them and they were ambushed and murdered."

Fields isn't alone in that thinking. Democratic Rep. Tom Sullivan's son, Alex, 
was one of the 12 people murdered in the 2012 Aurora theater shooting. Sullivan 
supported prosecutors' push for the death penalty for James Holmes. Even though 
a jury ultimately decided against it, Sullivan said he's glad it was an option. 
He doesn't want to tell any other family in a similar situation that they can't 
seek what they feel is justice.

Tom Sullivan, father of Alex Sullivan, who was killed in the Aurora movie 
theater shooting in 2012, talks about his son during a gun control rally. 
Sullivan was elected to the state House in November.

"Even after the fact there was no remorse from what he had done," Sullivan says 
of Holmes. "There's every indication if he were to have another chance at this, 
he would try to do it again. We have a mechanism if those people don't want to 
be a part of our society; we should have the ability to take those people out 
of our society."

Democratic bill sponsor Sen. Angela Williams is aware of her colleagues' 
personal reasons for supporting the death penalty but remains unswayed by their 
arguments.

"I'm approaching this with all due respect in the situation that [Fields] and 
Tom Sullivan have been in."

Williams believes the death penalty is too costly, and immoral. She's Catholic 
and says her religious faith has played a big role in her decision. She also 
feels it is not applied fairly. As a black woman, she worries for her son and 
other people of color.

"The three men who are African-American that sit on death row now — they are 
all from Arapahoe County. They all went to the same high school," Williams 
says. "Where you live and the color of your skin and how much money you have 
depends whether or not you get the death penalty."

In Colorado, it's been rare for prosecutors to seek the death penalty and even 
more rare for juries to impose it. The state has only executed one person since 
the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976: Gary Lee Davis in 
1997.

Democratic state Sen. Angela Williams, one of two Senate sponsors of a bill to 
repeal the death penalty in Colorado, listens to witnesses during a Judiciary 
Committee hearing Wednesday March 6, 2019.

Democrats have a slim majority in the Senate. With Fields and other Democrats 
waivering, they could need some GOP votes to pass the repeal.

If it makes it to the House, the bill will be on firmer footing; Democrats have 
a wider edge in that chamber. Yet, some of those members are grappling with 
what to do, too. Democratic Rep. Dominique Jackson covered crime extensively as 
a television reporter for 20 years.

"I have seen the crimes. I have been in the courtrooms. I have spent time with 
the families on both sides, be it the victim or the perpetrator," she says. 
"And I've witnessed an individual dying by lethal injection."

Jackson witnessed the execution of Jaturun Siripongs in 1999 in California. She 
says that, at the time, she didn't find the experience traumatic because she 
was just there to take down the facts. But all these years later, she can still 
vividly recall it.

"I remember the smells. I remember the footsteps walking down the hallways in 
San Quentin. I remember the eerie green glow of the lights in the hallway, and 
I remember that man's chest rising and falling."

As she tries to make up her mind, Jackson says she'll make sure to listen to 
all sides in the ongoing debate, including the different ways the death penalty 
shaped the lives of her colleagues.

(source: npr.org)








CALIFORNIA:

Death penalty is too costly — morally and financially — for California



What do the states of Alaska, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, 
Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, 
New York, North Dakota, Rhode Island, Vermont, West Virginia, Wisconsin and 
District of Columbia have in common?

The all have abolished the death penalty.

What do the states of Oregon, Colorado and Pennsylvania have in common? In 
each, governors have imposed moratoriums on executions by using executive 
powers.

Last week, California joined the second group when Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an 
executive order to impose a moratorium on capital punishment.

The order gives a reprieve — at least temporarily — to all 737 condemned 
inmates on the nation’s largest death row. Of that number, 24 condemned inmates 
have exhausted their appeals, including Michael Morales, 59. He was convicted 
in 1983 in San Joaquin County of the rape and murder of 17-year-old Terri 
Winchell. He came within 2 hours of execution 13 years ago.

Clearly, there are those whose crimes are so horrific, so savage they defy 
comprehension. In such cases the perpetrator’s continued existence offends. But 
do we want a justice system for retribution or as a means, flawed as it 
sometimes is, to bend behavior? In a society with a goal of moral behavior, 
there is only one answer.

To be sure Californians, as many Americans, remain divided over the death 
penalty issue. Twice since 2012 state voters have rejected attempts to end 
capital punishment.

As a practical matter, killers who are killed don’t kill again. As a practical 
matter, killers who are imprisoned for life only rarely kill again and then 
only inside the prison environment. Of course, as a practical matter there is 
virtually no evidence to support the notion that capital punishment deters 
crime.

To be sure, the political, social and emotional debate over the death penalty 
rarely comes down to practicality. If it did, the punishment would have been 
banned years ago. Since 1978, the state has executed 13 men. Those executions 
cost taxpayers a total of at least $4 billion. Spending that kind of money for 
that kind of result hardly is practical.

There also is the issue of justice delayed, not just for the accused but also 
for the victim’s survivors. Of the state’s 24 condemned inmates who have 
exhausted their appeals, the shortest time any has been on death row — the 
shortest — is 27 years. One man, Harvey Heishman, a rapist convicted of the 
1979 murder of an Oakland woman who was about to testify that he had sexually 
assaulted her, has been there almost 38 years.

The fact of the matter is, a California death row inmate is more likely to die 
of natural causes or from suicide than by lethal injection.

And what about the survivors? Justice for them? Do executions really bring the 
closure we so often use as a rationale? Does the death of the killer ease the 
pain of the victim’s survivors? Does eye-for-an-eye justice simply blind the 
rest of us?

“I do not believe that a civilized society can claim to be a leader in the 
world as long as its government continues to sanction the premeditated and 
discriminatory execution of its people,” Newsom said in issuing his executive 
order. “In short, the death penalty is inconsistent with our bedrock values and 
strikes at the very heart of what it means to be a Californian.”

Newsom’s order notes that those most often sent to death row are people of 
color, are poor, are those with intellectual disabilities and those who 
suffered series childhood traumas. The penalty costs too much to carry out. And 
that there is always the no-going-back possibility of executing an innocent 
person (164 times since 1973 — including five times in California — condemned 
prisoners have been found to have been wrongfully convicted).

We cannot simply dismiss such facts.

Newsom’s order is not a get-out-of-jail card. Locking a killer up for life 
without the possibility of parole can — and in select cases — should mean just 
that. Mass murderers Charles Manson and Juan Corona, both of whom died in the 
past five months after decades of incarceration, did not have a single moment 
of freedom after being arrested.

The fight over the death penalty does not end with Newsom’s order. County 
prosecutors still can pursue capital punishment. Juries still can convict those 
charged and recommend execution. Judges still can order death.

But Newsom’s order hits the pause button. It gives us a chance to consider 
again if we want to remain with 22 other states and more than 100 nations, 
including Russia, that have abolished the death penalty or continue down the 
dysfunctional path we’ve followed for decades.

(source: Opinion; Stockton Record)

***********************

In San Quentin, a moratorium on the death penalty elicits a muted response from 
the doomed



Douglas “Chief” Stankewitz got up Wednesday in the early morning darkness. 
That’s when he meditates and exercises and reads. He turned on the television 
and caught the Channel 7 news. It was around 5:30. And he heard.

Gov. Gavin Newsom planned to declare a moratorium on the death penalty that 
day, dismantle the death chamber. Because capital punishment, Newsom said, is 
immoral and expensive. Kills the innocent along with the guilty. Targets the 
black, the brown, the poor.

“I just thought, ‘It’s about time, about time someone stepped up who had the 
power and authority to do so’,” Stankewitz said.

He was the 1st person to land on California’s death row after capital 
punishment was reinstated in 1978. He was 20 then. He will be 61 in May.

He is still on death row, sentenced for the kidnapping and murder of Theresa 
Graybeal, 22, who had gone to the store for a bag of dog food. His case is 
making its arduous way through the courts. His next hearing is Friday in 
Fresno.

As the news about Newsom rippled through San Quentin, Stankewitz said in a 
telephone interview Thursday, there were no celebrations, no cheers among the 
737 condemned men on the largest death row in the United States.

“Some have talked about it,” Stankewitz said. “Other ones, I guess, feel 
numbed. They don’t believe what’s happening.…It’s like when people get 
sentenced to death. They get numb for a week or 2. Reality hasn’t set in.”

No matter how you feel about capital punishment, it is hard to argue that the 
system is working as originally planned — 13 years have passed since California 
administered a lethal injection in its seafoam green death chamber, with its 
rows of seats for those who wish to watch.

Stankewitz, a member of the Big Sandy Rancheria of Mono Indians, could be the 
poster child for the death penalty debate in California.

His defense team insists he is innocent. Capital punishment supporters believe 
he should have been dead a long time ago.

And Franklin E. Zimring, a law professor at UC Berkeley, points to the 
Stankewitz case as proof of California’s “irrational” system and its voters’ 
doubts about the ultimate sanction. The Golden State, he says, has “an honorary 
death penalty.” And that is no accident.

“If what you have is profound ambivalence and conflict, then you’re going to 
have a system that is pushed for good reason toward an operation which is more 
symbolic than actual,” Zimring said. “That’s a wonderful political advantage 
for a governor who wants to do the right thing but is worried about paying the 
price.”

On Feb. 8, 1978, Stankewitz and three friends were stranded in Modesto, looking 
for a way to get back to Fresno. Hitchhiking didn’t work, so they walked to a 
nearby K-Mart, looking for a car to steal. That’s when they saw Graybeal, a 
newlywed, walking to her car.

They followed her, and when she opened the door, Teena Topping pushed her 
inside and entered the car. Stankewitz, who was 19 at the time, Marlin Lewis, 
and 14-year-old Billy Brown followed suit. When they got to Fresno, they 
stopped at a seedy hotel to shoot up. Then they headed to a small town called 
Calwa to score more drugs, according to court documents.

That’s where Graybeal was shot in the head. Brown testified that Stankewitz 
pulled the trigger. But 15 years later, he recanted. In a 4-page declaration, 
he said he had been coerced by the Fresno district attorney, told that he would 
be charged with murder if he did not testify.

“I did not at any time see Doug Stankewitz holding a gun,” Brown declared. “I 
did not see who pulled the trigger.”

Stankewitz said Thursday that he never went to Calwa, where Graybeal was 
killed. Instead, he said, he wandered Fresno’s Chinatown in a stoned haze. “You 
just walk,” he said. “Your brain ain’t thinking.”

Stankewitz went to trial in July 1978. That October he was sentenced to die, 
according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. One 
day later, he arrived at San Quentin.

“I haven’t been on grass for [nearly] 42 years,” he said Thursday. “No grass, 
no mud, no dirt. Just steel and cement you’re walking on, looking at.”

Stankewitz’s first conviction was thrown out in 1982. He was retried in 1983, 
convicted again and sentenced to death again. In 2012, the U.S. 9th Circuit 
Court of Appeals tossed out Stankewitz’s death sentence and ordered he either 
be given life in prison without the possibility of parole or be tried again to 
determine his punishment.

That trial is scheduled for April.

Curtis L. Briggs, one of Stankewitz’s attorneys, said that since his current 
legal team took over in 2016, new evidence has come to light that would show 
the stocky Mono Indian with black hair cascading down his back was framed. 
Other evidence — including blood samples — that could help prove his innocence 
has disappeared, according to his lawyers.

They don’t just want a new sentencing trial; they want the case against 
Stankewitz to be dismissed or ask that he be given a new trial.

The Fresno district attorney’s office declined to comment on the case and 
rebuked Stankewitz’s legal team for talking outside of court in a way that 
could prejudice the proceeding.

“A failure of the defense team to abide by the law does not excuse my office’s 
obligation to comply with it,” said Steve E. Wright, assistant district 
attorney for Fresno County.

Over the years, Wayne Graybeal, Theresa’s father-in-law, largely spoke for the 
family. He died of bladder cancer in 2017.

But in a 2012 interview, he told the San Francisco Chronicle that Stankewitz 
“was a bad guy and I don’t know why he’s alive. I wish they would just do what 
they have to do to him ... my daughter-in-law didn’t deserve what happened to 
her. She was a nice girl. That man needs to die.”

Stankewitz gets two 15-minute phone calls a day. He uses them to talk to 
Colleen Hicks, who he has known for the past decade and loved for the past 
seven years. She is 71, Cherokee and Lakota, the retired executive director of 
the Museum of the American Indian in Novato.

First they pray, repeating two benedictions Hicks wrote on Stankewitz’s behalf. 
The prayers begin and end the same way, with a call to the Great Spirit and a 
heartfelt aho, a Plains Indian’s way of saying amen.

One prayer is thanksgiving. The other is all appeal: “Great Spirit, unravel the 
web of lies and framed evidence that has kept Chief wrongfully imprisoned and 
let the truth of his innocence shine light on his path to freedom now, aho.”

Ten years ago, Father John J. “Jack” O’Neill was a pastor of St. Mary Magdalene 
in Bolinas, where Hicks plays piano and is choir director. He had spent 12 
years as a chaplain at San Quentin and asked her if she would write to 
Stankewitz, who was in isolation when O’Neill met him.

They corresponded for three years before Hicks visited San Quentin on Feb. 11, 
2012, 14 years after Graybeal’s death.

“I had prepared myself to see someone who was really defeated and needed a lot 
of just sympathy,” Hicks said. “But there was this giant.” She paused, laughed. 
“He just looked like a warrior to me. His eyes were clear and intelligent, 
alert. I couldn’t believe it.”

They talked about his case, and when the visit ended, she asked him, “‘Are you 
glad I came? And he said, ‘When can you come back?’ And so that started this 
slow process.”

When Stankewitz is freed — she does not say “if” — they plan for him to live 
with her in Bolinas, in her high-beamed old-growth redwood home on a leafy acre 
near Point Reyes National Seashore. She believes that nature will be an 
antidote to incarceration.

Stankewitz, Hicks and his attorneys worry that the moratorium could complicate 
his bid for freedom, that the Fresno district attorney’s office might just 
switch course and agree that he should be imprisoned for life without the 
possibility of parole.

Complications or no, Stankewitz said, Newsom’s decision was the right one.

“I talked to other prisoners,” he said. “They feel the same way I feel about 
it. ... It ain’t no rich people up here, no big-name family people up here. ...

“To be sentenced to death and waiting 20, 25, 30, 40 years and they still carry 
it out?” he said. “That’s cruel.”

(source: Los Angeles Times)

*************************

Calif. Gov. Gavin Newsom puts himself at top of national news with moratorium 
on death penalty



No sooner did Gov. Gavin Newsom declare a moratorium on the death penalty in 
California than he was on a plane to the East Coast for a series of national 
media appearances, including stops at CBS, NPR and MSNBC.

“He’s making the case as a leader to hearts and minds, just as he did with 
marriage equality, when his willingness to go out on a limb made a huge 
difference,” Newsom political spokesman Dan Newman said.

“He’s making the case as a leader to hearts and minds, just as he did with 
marriage equality, when his willingness to go out on a limb made a huge 
difference,” Newsom political spokesman Dan Newman said.

(source: San Francisco Chronicle)

*****************

Newsom’s moratorium on the death penalty is neither right nor just



The Governor signed an executive order to impose a moratorium on the death 
penalty. He is appearing on national television shows to tout his decision. 
Some lawmakers and political pundits have applauded his action as bold and 
just.

Make no mistake; this decision was neither right nor just.

Victims who survived the calculated and horrific murder of a child, parent or 
spouse suffer a pain that never completely goes away. When the murderer is 
convicted and sentenced to death, family members often experience a basic sense 
of justice.

It’s difficult for 12 jurors to sentence someone to death. The small percentage 
of murderers who wind up on death row have often raped or tortured their 
victims before ultimately killing them.

Governor Newsom callously disregards the anguish of these families and rips 
from them any sense of justice, victimizing them all over again.

The Governor’s action brings back the pain and agony they have been forced to 
endure.

On the campaign trail, the Governor said he would respect the will of the 
voters with regard to the death penalty.

Within just three months of being sworn-in, Californians took him at his word 
and elected him Governor.

His executive order, however, is a reversal of his promise to the voters. 
Moreover, his order grants reprieve to all death row murders, including those 
who have killed multiple victims or ambushed peace officers. It is easier to 
oppose the death penalty in concept than to take a hard look at the facts and 
victims in the eyes.

California voters have spoken loudly, clearly and repeatedly, as recently as 
2016, that the death penalty serves as a legal and appropriate punishment for 
those who commit vicious, evil crimes.

The Governor’s decision to disregard the voters’ will is an affront to our 
system of justice.

A jury convicted these criminals. In some trials, 12 people and alternates 
dedicated weeks, sometimes months, of their lives reviewing witness testimony, 
physical and DNA evidence before determining beyond a reasonable doubt that 
these murderers committed the most heinous acts against other human beings.

Governor Newsom has the extraordinary power to review the decision made by the 
jurors in every death row case. If the Governor concludes that there is 
potential for injustice in a particular case, he may do what other Governors 
have done and grant clemency to that individual. He has instead granted a 
reprieve to all 737 convicted murderers.

Yes, this was a bold decision. It ignored voters’ will. It disregards our 
system of justice. It denies victims and their families justice.

The only thing wherein – they can find peace and justice – for the one who so 
cruelly killed their loved ones is the death penalty.

(source: Opinion; Senator Jim Nielsen served on the Board of Prison Terms, the 
largest parole authority in the nation, from 1990 to 2007. He represents the 
Fourth Senate District, which includes the counties of Butte, Colusa, Del 
Norte, Glenn, Nevada, Placer, Sacramento, Shasta, Siskiyou, Sutter, Tehama, 
Trinity and Yuba----Orange County register)








OREGON:

Let voters decide on death penalty



Oregonians have been of 2 minds about the death penalty over the years. That’s 
why it is especially important to let voters, not the Legislature, have the 
last say on whether this state should effectively outlaw execution as 
punishment for the state’s worst crimes.

House Bill 3268 would ignore that crucial step. Instead, the measure, sponsored 
by state Rep. Mitch Greenlick, D-Portland, would simply change the definition 
of “aggravated murder” to eliminate everyone now on Oregon’s death row. 
Execution would be available only when 2 or more were killed in an act of 
terrorism.

Favor the death penalty or not, an end run around voters is no way to decide 
the question.

The state’s history with capital punishment shows just how often we’ve changed 
our minds on the subject. Oregon became a state in 1859 and first adopted the 
death penalty in 1864. Voters outlawed the procedure first in 1914 by a narrow, 
157 votes, margin. It was reinstated, again by voters, by a much larger margin 
in 1920.

They changed their minds again in 1964, repealing the death penalty a 2nd time. 
Just 2 days later, Gov. Mark Hatfield commuted the sentences of the 3 people on 
death row, including Jeannace June Freeman, then 22, who had been convicted of 
killing her lover’s 6-year-old son by throwing him off the bridge into the 
Crooked River Gorge in May 1961.

Voters reinstated the death penalty in 1978, only to have it overturned by the 
state Supreme Court in 1981. Voters reinstated it again in 1984.

It’s hard to say what voters would do if asked to vote on the death penalty 
again. Nationally, execution is far less common than it used to be. Oregonians 
should get that chance, however — the number of states that do not have the 
death penalty has about doubled since the punishment was reinstated here, 
suggesting views on it are changing. Simply eliminating most crimes from that 
punishment, as HB 3268 would do, skips that important step and should be 
defeated.

(source: Editorial, The (Bend) Bulletin)