EDITORIALS: ​“Forget the Death Penalty”

On June 24, the Democrat Herald (Oregon) featured an editorial about Randy Lee Guzek, who was recently sentenced to death for the fourth time for murders committed in 1987. The Oregon Supreme Court overturned his three previous death sentences on various grounds. The editorial questioned whether such a death penalty process made any sense. “If the procedures are so difficult that Oregon trial courts cannot get them right in three tries, maybe there is something wrong with the procedures and the system.” In 26 years, Oregon has executed two defendants, both of whom waived their appeals. The paper concluded, “The appellate courts are telling the people something: Forget the death penalty; it’s not gonna happen. And if it ever does happen, it will be many, many years after the crime. By that time, it will be easy to argue that the man facing execution is not the same bad character who, decades before, took someone’s life. So why kill him now?” The editorial posed life without parole as an alternative to death penalty in Oregon, saying ” Unless we want to keep making a mockery of the death penalty law by refusing to carry it out, Oregon would be better off if prosecutors just asked for life without parole instead.” Read full editorial below.

Editorial: What courts are telling us

If you’re looking for an indictment of one part of our judicial system consider this opening sentence of a little news story from Bend we ran the last week: “An Oregon man convicted of murdering a couple in their home has been sentenced to death for the fourth time in 22 years.”

The story was about Randy Lee Guzek, who killed Rod and Lois Houser in 1987. The killer was 18 at the time. Now he’s 41. Three times, the Oregon Supreme Court had overturned his previous death sentences on procedural grounds.

The average citizen has to ask: If the procedures are so difficult that Oregon trial courts cannot get them right in three tries, maybe there is something wrong with the procedures and the system.

Voters reinstated the death penalty, most recently, in 1984. Since then two men have been put to death by lethal injection, both because they had refused to go through the routine appeals. Dozens of other death sentences have been put off while the procedures are followed.

The appellate courts are telling the people something: Forget the death penalty; it’s not gonna happen. And if it ever does happen, it will be many, many years after the crime. By that time, it will be easy to argue that the man facing execution is not the same bad character who, decades before, took someone’s life. So why kill him now?

For aggravated murder, Oregon law offers another sentence: Life without parole.

Unless we want to keep making a mockery of the death penalty law by refusing to carry it out, Oregon would be better off if prosecutors just asked for life without parole instead.

(Editorial, “What courts are telling us,” The Democrat Herald, June 24, 2010). See Life Without Parole and Editorials.