Oregon Governor Signs Bill Narrowing Use of the Death Penalty

Calling the state’s death penal­ty ​“dys­func­tion­al,” ​“cost­ly,” and ​“immoral,” Oregon Governor Kate Brown (pic­tured, left, at sign­ing cer­e­mo­ny) on August 1, 2019 signed a bill sig­nif­i­cant­ly lim­it­ing the crimes for which cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment can be imposed in the state. The new law amends Oregon’s def­i­n­i­tion of death-eli­gi­ble ​“aggra­vat­ed mur­der,” reduc­ing the cat­e­gories of mur­der pun­ish­able by death from 19 to four. The new law restricts the death penal­ty to cas­es involv­ing acts of ter­ror­ism in which two or more peo­ple are killed, pre­med­i­tat­ed mur­ders of chil­dren aged thir­teen or younger, prison mur­ders com­mit­ted by those already incar­cer­at­ed for aggra­vat­ed mur­der, and pre­med­i­tat­ed mur­ders of police or correctional officers. 

Oregon’s action con­tin­ues the steady trend away from cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment across the American west. Governors in four west­ern states—Oregon, Washington, Colorado, and California—have imposed mora­to­ria on exe­cu­tions this decade, and the Washington Supreme Court struck down its cap­i­tal-sen­tenc­ing statute as uncon­sti­tu­tion­al in November 2018. In 2011, then-Governor John Kitzhaber insti­tut­ed the first death-penal­ty mora­to­ri­um, declar­ing: ​“I refuse to be a part of this com­pro­mised and inequitable sys­tem any longer; and I will not allow fur­ther exe­cu­tions while I am Governor.” In halt­ing exe­cu­tions in the state, Kitzhaber said, ​“I am con­vinced we can find a bet­ter solu­tion that keeps soci­ety safe, sup­ports the vic­tims of crime and their fam­i­lies and reflects Oregon val­ues.” In 2015, short­ly after tak­ing office, Brown extend­ed the state’s exe­cu­tion mora­to­ri­um.

In 2018, every west­ern state except Arizona and Nevada set or tied a record low in the num­ber of new death sen­tences imposed, and those states imposed just one sen­tence more than their record lows. No state west of Texas has car­ried out an exe­cu­tion since the two-hour-long botched exe­cu­tion of Joseph Wood by Arizona in July 2014.

“Oregon’s leg­is­la­ture made the wise deci­sion to ​‘close the front door’ — most of the way, at least — to death row, reserv­ing death sen­tences for only the rarest and most heinous mur­ders,” Brown said in pre­pared remarks at a sign­ing cer­e­mo­ny that was closed to the media. ​“This is an impor­tant step, in Oregon and nation­al­ly, toward one day elim­i­nat­ing the death penalty nationwide.” 

Oregon has not exe­cut­ed any­one in more than two decades. The only two exe­cu­tions it has con­duct­ed since exe­cu­tions resumed in the U.S. in 1977 were in 1996 and 1997, and both involved ​”vol­un­teers”who had waived their appeals. Thirty-one peo­ple are cur­rent­ly on death row in the state, a vast major­i­ty of whom could not have been sen­tenced to death under the new law. ​“Oregon’s death penal­ty is dys­func­tion­al. It is cost­ly and immoral,” said Brown in her pre­pared remarks. ​“Our state’s crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem con­tin­ues to impose death sen­tences, and send peo­ple to death row, even as we know that no one has been exe­cut­ed here in a gen­er­a­tion.” Alice Lundell, a spokesper­son for the Oregon Justice Resource Center, a crim­i­nal jus­tice reform group that oppos­es the death penal­ty, called on Governor Brown to use the state’s pas­sage of the new law as an oppor­tu­ni­ty ​“to stand up against th[e] type of politi­ciz­ing of the death penal­ty that is hap­pen­ing at the fed­er­al lev­el” by com­mut­ing the death sen­tences of the state’s death-row prisoners.