After 30 years in prison and four years on death row, Gary Haugen’s wish to no longer postpone his sentencing was granted when Marion County Judge Joseph Guimond announced Haugen would be put to death by lethal injection Aug. 16. @@http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/index.ssf/2011/05/judge_to_quiz_death-row_inmate_gary_haugen_today_about_his_desire_to_die.html@@
Haugen’s court-appointed attorneys attempted to go against their client’s wishes when they scheduled psychiatric evaluations in an attempt to have him found incompetent to make his own decisions.
“I feel that it’s ideology and political views that are motivating my counsel, and I think it’s an affront to my state and constitutional right at this juncture of the appellate process to make this choice,” Haugen said.
He said the appeals and delays his counsel have filed are “cruel and unusual punishment” and requested that no more appeals be made on his behalf.
“Often times we talk, in life, about life-or-death decisions. This really is a life-or-death decision we’re dealing with here,” Guimond said. “So it’s really very serious, and I think you appreciate how serious it is.”
Haugen has been quite open about his desires to drop legal challenges to the case, sending several letters throughout the years to court personnel.
He is convicted of two murders, one in 1981 and one in 2003 while in prison. He was sentenced to death in 2007 and has been on death row ever since.
When Haugen was 19 years old, he was sentenced to life in prison after he was found guilty in the beating of his ex-girlfriend’s mother, Mary Archer.
Prosecutors in that case said he broke into her home, raped her and beat her to death using his fists, a hammer and a baseball bat.
While serving his life sentence at the Oregon State Penitentiary, Haugen and fellow inmate Jason Van Brumwell killed inmate David Polin.
Polin’s body was found in the band room; his skull was crushed, and his body had been stabbed 84 times.
The state requested the execution to take place July 28, but Haugen asked for an alternate date, citing July 28 was his nephew’s birthday. Due to Oregon law, the execution date could not be set for Sept. 2, which was suggested by Haugen, as it extends past the 120 days.
Ultimately the judge set Aug. 16 as the date.
Haugen suggested Sept. 2 as his execution date as this was the anniversary of the killing of inmate David Polin, for which he and Van Brumwell were convicted and sentenced.
This will be the first Oregon execution since 1997.
The first execution in Oregon was carried out in 1851, and executions have been carried out exclusively by the Oregon State Penitentiary since 1904.
The death penalty has been a controversial topic in Oregon since it was first instituted and outlawed between 1914 and 1920, from 1964 to 1978 and from 1981 to 1984.
“Economic disparity, racial inequality, geographically-driven cultural differences are a central piece to the narrative of the death penalty,” University law professor Michael Moffitt said. @@http://directory.uoregon.edu/telecom/directory.jsp?p=findpeople%2Ffind_results&m=staff&d=person&b=name&s=Michael+Moffitt@@
Due to imperfect records, it is nearly impossible to determine how many people have been executed in the state, although the number is estimated to be around 60.
Since the death penalty’s reinstatement in 1984, two inmates have been executed, Douglas Franklin Wright in September 1996 and Harry Charles Moore in May 1997. @@http://www.ncadp.org/affiliate.cfm?affID=35@@
Sister Helen Prejean, who wrote “Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the United States,” visited the University campus during fall term to talk about her work as an advocate for the abolition of the death penalty. @@http://www.prejean.org/@@
“We’re beginning to see the diminishment in practice of the death penalty in America,” Prejean said, though she later pointed out that even though fewer people are being executed, 64 percent of Americans still agree with the death penalty.
There are 36 inmates on Oregon’s death row as of May 1, of whom 35 are male and one is female.
Though Marion County leads the state with seven death row inmates, six of the inmates on death row come from Lane County.
University alumnus Robert K. Elder did a historical study in his book “Last Words of the Executed” through prison archives, newspaper archives and interviews with a chaplain.
“I worked on the book for seven years and just when I thought I heard it all, someone would catch me off guard,” Elder said.
Elder explained that the last words of death row inmates often include the five stages of anger, a claim for their innocence and, in more recent cases, they apologize to victims’ families. Apologies are new because families were not allowed in the execution chamber until the 1990s.
Elder also researched a few different inmates from Oregon, one of whom admitted guilt while the other claimed innocence.
“At least three people in the book cheered for their favorite football team,” Elder said.
Oregon death penalty by the numbers:
Inmates on death row: 36
Men: 35
Women: 1
Ethnicities:
White: 28
African-American: 4
Hispanic: 3
Native American: 1
Average age: 46.6
Death row inmates per county:
Marion: 7
Lane: 6
Multnomah: 5
Douglas: 4
Washington: 4
Clackamas: 3
Coos: 2
Columbia: 1
Curry: 1
Deschutes: 1
Lincoln: 1
Yamhill: 1