Oregon Gov. Kate Brown announced Tuesday she would commute the sentences of all 17 people on death row to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Voters have gone back and forth on the death penalty over the years, abolishing and reinstating it repeatedly. Voters’ most recent decision on the death penalty was in 1984, when they inserted it into the state Constitution., according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
In 2019, the Legislature passed a bill that limited the crimes that qualified for the death penalty by narrowing the definition of aggravated murder to killing two or more people as an act of organized terrorism; intentionally and with premeditation kilIing a child younger than 14; killing another person while locked up in jail or prison for a previous murder; or killing a police, correctional or probation officer., a move that acknowledged the effective end of capital punishment in the state.
Among the convicts whose sentences Brown commuted is Jesse Caleb Compton, a Springfield man who was convicted of killing his live-in girlfriend’s 3-year-old daughter in the late 1990s. The girl’s body showed evidence of horrific abuse and prosecutors called it the worst case of child abuse they had ever seen.
Advocates including the Oregon Justice Resource Center pushed for the governor to commute all death row sentences for years. On Tuesday, the center’s executive director Bobbin Singh said in a statement that Brown “has made the right choice for Oregon in commuting these death sentences and dismantling the death chamber.”
Oregon Senate Republican Leader Tim Knopp, R- Bend, released a statement late Tuesday asking whether the people of Oregon had voted to end the death penalty. Baker said he also worries that Longo’s commuted sentence will give him a chance to appeal for parole and eventually, a chance to get out. He said he worries for his family’s safety if Longo, now 48, were to ever get out of prison.
One of Clarkson’s deputy district attorneys, Matt Kemmy, said he’s prosecuted five murderers who initially were dealt death penalty sentences by juries. Three of those sentences stood until Tuesday – that of the Turnidges and Robert Langley, who killed two people in separate attacks in 1988. The body of one of Langely’s victims was found under a cactus garden on the grounds of the Oregon State Hospital, where Langley had been receiving mental health treatment.
“OK, let’s just make it harder for the victims to go through their days, knowing that our governor is looking out for them and not us,” Terri Hakim said. “It’s a very personal slap in the face.”Hakim sarcastically joked that at least the governor waited until the day after the 14th anniversary of the bombing to make her announcement.
Gary Dwayne Haugen was convicted of aggravated murder in 1981 for killing the mother of his ex-girlfriend at her Northeast Portland home. He beat the woman to death with his fists, a hammer and a baseball bat and was sentenced to life in prison. Then in 2007 Haugen, along with fellow inmate Jason Van Brumwell, was convicted in the 2003 killing of fellow prison inmate David Shane Polin, 31, in the activities area at the Salem prison.
Ernest Noland Lotches was convicted of killing William G. Hall, 33, a downtown Portland security guard during a running gun battled that terrified Saturday shoppers in August 1992. Hall, a security guard for the downtown Economic Improvement District, had tried to question Lotches about a minor assault. Lotches fled, and the two exchanged gunfire. Hall died after pulling a 9-year-old child out of the line of fire as Lotches was trying to commandeer a car.
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