Gov. John Kitzhaber took a stand to not only halt an execution scheduled for next month, but also to block any other executions, at least until the end of his tenure in 2015.
A longstanding opponent of the death penalty, Kitzhaber allowed two executions to go through during his first two terms as governor from 1995 to 2003.@@http://www.ohs.org/education/focus/governor-john-a-kitzhaber.cfm@@ The state currently has 37 inmates on death row.@@http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/index.ssf/oregon_death_row.html@@
The decision comes just weeks before Gary Haugen,@@http://www.ijm.org/staff/gary-haugen@@ an inmate convicted of murdering his former girlfriend’s mother and who later killed a fellow inmate, was set to be executed. The death by lethal injection was scheduled for Dec. 7.
“I was torn between my personal convictions about the morality of capital punishment and my oath to uphold the Oregon Constitution,” Kitzhaber wrote in a statement. “I simply cannot participate once again in something I believe to be morally wrong.”
Voters approved the death penalty in 1984 after almost a century of flip-flopping on the law regarding the issue. Oregon differs from other states because the two inmates who have been executed since volunteered to be executed after waiving their rights for appeals.
“I think this is a courageous step to fix a broken system,” said Rita Radostitz,@@http://directory.uoregon.edu/telecom/directory.jsp?p=findpeople%2Ffind_results&m=staff&d=person&b=name&s=Rita+Radostitz@@ communications director and adjunct professor at the University, about Kitzhaber’s decision. “This is completely within his statutory authority. This is a clear statement that he wants this to be the beginning of a thoughtful conversation about the broken system.”
Radostitz spent eight years previously representing people on death row in Texas in the 1990s and was involved in promoting legislation in Oregon to abolish the death penalty. Kitzhaber’s decision makes Oregon the fifth state since 2007 to halt executions.@@http://www.antideathpenalty.org/success.html@@
University junior Jordan Gray@@http://directory.uoregon.edu/telecom/directory.jsp?p=findpeople%2Ffind_results&m=student&d=person&b=name&s=Jordan+Gray@@ believes the State should keep the death penalty on a case-by-case basis.
“We have to consider their detriment to society, what they did and also the costs associated with the death penalty as opposed to the price of keeping them incarcerated for their life,”@@really? the price?@@ @@Jonathan is a jackass@@he said. “There are a lot of factors that play into it. It is not a decision to be taken lightly.”
Death penalty proponents criticized the decision, saying the governor is superseding the will of voters who have supported capital punishment.
Kitzhaber said he regrets his decision to allow executions in the past and is standing strong behind his decision to halt executions in the future.
“I do not believe that those executions made us safer, and certainly they did not make us nobler as a society,” he said.