No More Capital Punishment In Oregon

The outgoing Governor of Oregon has commuted the sentences of all prisoners on death row. Kate Brown is a Democrat. Are you surprised? 

She was quoted by one news outlet as saying the death penalty “cannot be and never has been administered fairly and equitably.”

Quite right, last year ten men but only one woman were executed in the United States. Sexist or what?

She continued: “I have long believed that justice is not advanced by taking a life, and the state should not be in the business of executing people — even if a terrible crime placed them in prison”.

This is an ideological position rather than a practical one, but let’s take a look at some of the people she has pardoned or would have pardoned. No one has been executed in Oregon this Millennium and only two people have been executed there since 1978. A lesser known serial killer named Douglas Wright was executed in 1996, and double murderer Harry Moore was executed the following year. If Moore wasn’t the worst of the worst, Wright certainly was. What justification can there be for the state not to execute a serial killer who has been convicted of heinous crimes on overwhelming evidence?

Up until Brown’s blanket commutation there were said to be seventeen people on death row in Oregon, all men. Two of these are inarguably the worst of the worst. Christian Longo murdered his wife, his 4 year old son and two younger daughters.

Serial killer Dayton Rogers was a married man who also used prostitutes. And murdered them. He has been sentenced to death no fewer than four times. His fourth death sentence was also overturned. His first known victim was attacked in 1972; she wasn’t a prostitute and was only 15 years old. She survived, but Rogers remained at large until 1987. He was spared execution, apparently, because his crimes were not aggravated enough, which begs the question what is?

Although he is nothing like as depraved as Rogers or Longo, Gary Haugen murdered another inmate. When he was just 19, Haugen murdered his girlfriend’s mother, beating her to death. He was convicted of that murder in 1981. In 2004, he murdered David Polin who was serving time for attempted murder and drug offences. Should a convicted murderer who kills again be spared execution, even if his victim is another inmate?

Kate Brown and politicians like her have a strange set of priorities. Neither the streets of Oregon nor its prisons will be any safer as long as people like her hold the reins of power in the United States.