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2011-11-23 -Lurid Crime Tales-

Oregon Governor Has Personal Problems So Halts All Executions In State

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Posted by Anonymoose 2011-11-23 08:59|| || Front Page|| [5 views ] Top

#1 Executions will continue in the streets, homes and businesses without due process. Meanwhile the citizens of the state will also continue to lock their doors and windows at night, avoid certain parts of towns, and worry after the sun goes down about the safety of their children. Who really rules? Who really exercises the ultimate power? Who dares testify against thugs and gangs when they and not the state readily apply such power?

Posted by Procopius2k 2011-11-23 09:57|| 2011-11-23 09:57|| Front Page Top

#2 The death penalty doesn't work because it takes too long to put them down that folks really do forget the victims. Politicians are notoriously wobbly and have too many opportunities to derail things.

I would suggest a prison for murders that has no cable, no visitation, no frills. More like the man in the iron mask than what we have these days. Then the prisoner will have lots of time to think about what they did without possibility of parole or escape or rape.

Posted by rjschwarz 2011-11-23 10:19|| 2011-11-23 10:19|| Front Page Top

#3 In this particular case, there is a fairly easy solution used in other states: that the governor cannot involve himself unless asked to by the state board of pardons & paroles.

With some jiggering by the state legislature or a public referendum, this could include stripping the authority to intercede in any procedural way by the governor, so he could not just "halt executions", because of his personal neurosis.

Posted by Anonymoose 2011-11-23 10:24|| 2011-11-23 10:24|| Front Page Top

#4 The death penalty doesn't work because it takes too long to put them down that folks really do forget the victims.

It just takes a different form. That's what vendetta is about [see Romeo and Juliet]. It happens in the hood and elsewhere today. Someone gets killed. No witnesses or informants. A couple days or months later, someone else gets the 'payback'. The common term is street justice. What the self worshiping ruling class can't grasp is that they are surrendering authority and legitimacy of the government to other agents to render to the people some form of justice they believe they can't get from the prince or state.

Posted by Procopius2k 2011-11-23 10:36|| 2011-11-23 10:36|| Front Page Top

#5 there are currently 30 inmates sentenced to die in Oregon. Twenty-nine are housed at the Oregon State Penitentiary. One is housed at Two Rivers Correctional Institution in Umatilla. All inmates sentenced to death have been convicted of Aggravated Murder. Oregon voters reinstated the death penalty in 1984. Since then, there have been two executions. Douglas Wright was executed by lethal injection on September 6, 1996. Harry Moore was executed by lethal injection on May 16, 1997. Before Wright, the last inmate to be executed was LeeRoy Sanford McGahuey in 1962, the method used being the gas chamber. Oregon uses only lethal injection for executions.

Wright was sentenced to death for luring three homeless men to a remote area of Wasco County with a false promise of work, and then killing them. Wright later admitted killing a fourth man, Anthony Nelson, a Makah Indian. Shortly Before his execution, Wright confessed to the abduction and murder of Portland, Oregon 10-year-old Luke Tredway, committed in 1984.

It is not like there is a question about the guilt or severity of the crimes.

Prison officials had been preparing for the Dec. 6 execution of Gary Haugen, who also had waived appeals. Haugen was serving a life sentence for fatally bludgeoning his former girlfriend's mother, Mary Archer, when he was sentenced to death for the 2003 killing of fellow inmate David Polin, who had 84 stab wounds and a crushed skull.

My questions are:

Is the governor upholding and carrying out the law?

Is there justice for the victims and there families?

Posted by JohnQC 2011-11-23 10:52|| 2011-11-23 10:52|| Front Page Top

#6 That being said, in past I have proposed that the way out of this and other federally created dilemmas would be a constitutional amendment establishing a Second Court of the United States, a jurisdictional, not constitutional, court, just subordinate to the SCOTUS, but superior to the federal district courts.

It would, in effect, take over the duties that the US senate abrogated with the 17th Amendment, and would have an organization much like the senate, with two state judges from each state, *appointed* (only) by each state legislature, in parallel terms with their senators.

Its function would be a "court of the states", to decide if any of the 8,000 cases appealed from the federal district courts to the SCOTUS every year (the great legal bottleneck), originally sent up on constitutional grounds by any of the 3,600 federal judges, should *not* be considered at federal jurisdiction, but returned to state jurisdiction, as *their* business to decide.

The sole original jurisdiction of the 2nd court would be to handle all lawsuits between the federal government and the states, giving the states first crack at deciding who was right, not the federal courts.

Importantly, while most business of the court would be by a random panel of non-involved states, which is how it is done in federal courts, if the majority of the full court found against either federal jurisdiction or in favor of the states against the federal government, while the decision could still be appealed to the SCOTUS, the SCOTUS would have to cite "exact text" from the constitution to overturn their decision.

This means no interpolation or extrapolation from the constitution, or judicial precedent, or "common practice" by the federal government would suffice. Unless it is written down in the actual text of the constitution, and clearly, the states win.

And if 2/3rds of the 2nd Court agreed, then the subject could not be appealed to the SCOTUS at all, thus establishing the 2nd Court as the equivalent of a much safer version of a permanent constitutional convention.

This would strongly swing the balance of power from the federal government back to the individual states for many years, and severely erode the size and power of the federal government, but in an orderly and methodical manner.

As far as the death penalty goes, this would be a means to tell federal judges with agendas to "butt out" of state death penalty cases unless there was a real and serious constitutional issue involved. No more nitpicking over minutiae, and no more dictating to states how judges personally and whimsically wanted the death penalty enforced or not.

Posted by Anonymoose 2011-11-23 10:59|| 2011-11-23 10:59|| Front Page Top

#7 Tell the Govenor that he now has to walk through the Bad sections of the Capitol, alone,Unarmed, and at Night.
The new Governor May see things differently.

Posted by Redneck Jim 2011-11-23 17:09|| 2011-11-23 17:09|| Front Page Top

#8 Interesting idea, 'moose. But it adds another layer of complexity, and it's still too centralized for my taste. The 50 states were supposed to be laboratories in which each gets to try its own approach, and maybe change if they see another state is doing it better. Wouldn't simply repealing the 17th Amendment accomplish many of those goals?

Posted by RandomJD 2011-11-23 18:30|| 2011-11-23 18:30|| Front Page Top

#9 FTA: Oregon's constitution gives Kitzhaber authority to commute the sentences of all death row inmates, but he said he will not do so because the policy on capital punishment is a matter for voters to decide.
Main point I want to make is that Kitzhaber can instantly commute all current valid death sentences, but refuses to do so despite his moral qualms. His 'reasoning' makes no sense. He is trying to force a legislative change by leaving the affair hanging.
I agree that non-judicial executions will continue at street level. The electorate's trust in gov't looking out for their best interests is already fading fast.

Posted by Anguper Hupomosing9418 2011-11-23 18:38|| 2011-11-23 18:38|| Front Page Top

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