Held to answer

Sometimes a Death Row inmate’s best friend can be a retired prosecutor.

That’s what Gary Haugen needs if he really wants to be executed. Since announcing in May that he wants to waive all appeals and die, he has discovered the cruelest truth about the death penalty: It’s all about the care and keeping of defense attorneys.

In a hand-written letter to Oregon Supreme Court Chief Justice Paul DeMuniz, Haugen denounced attorneys W. Keith Goody and Andy Simrin, who oppose his efforts.

“They … serve their own interests…,” Haugen writes. “It is laughable to pretend that they are serving my legal interests …,”

So far they have been successful. They sought to overturn his Aug. 16 execution by persuading the state Supreme Court that Haugen was mentally incompetent. To support their arguments, they cited the results of an evaluation by Portland neuropsychologist Muriel Lezak.

A Marion County judge had previously found Haugen competent to fire Goody and Simrin and waive all appeals. The two attorneys and Jeffrey Ellis, an attorney affiliated with Oregonians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, pushed ahead with their own agenda and a higher court petition.

“Their vision for me is my greatest enemy – for they only want to see me rot in prison for life,” Haugen wrote in his own pleading.

He also pointed out that he did not sign a waiver to be interviewed by Dr. Lezak or sign a waiver to have her notes made public.

An issue he doesn’t raise is Dr. Lezak’s stand on the death penalty. Considering that she was married to former U.S. Attorney Sid Lezak, who was openly opposed to the death penalty, it’s fair to consider what bias she brought to her evaluation.

The media love to beat the drum in opposition to the death penalty without ever considering what would happen if there were no death penalty. History has shown what happens: Killers are released from prison and kill again, there is public outcry, and capital punishment is reinstated. That’s not the worst of it, though. In their own words, death penalty opponents have made it clear what they will do once the death penalty is gone. Look at this (and note how they refer to life in prison as “death by incarceration”):

“Once we accept death by incarceration as our ultimate legal sanction, moreover, we should provide to all defendants facing this sanction the same legal safeguards and appellate procedures presently afforded to capital defendants.” (From “Life Without Parole, America’s Other Death Penalty” by Robert Johnson and Sandra McGunnigall-Smith in The Prison Journal, Vol. 88, No. 2, June 2008)

In other words, the attorneys and activists who have turned capital punishment into an expensive farce will do the same for life without parole. All inmates given LWOP will receive never-ending appeals.

If Haugen really wants legal counsel who will represent him truthfully, he would be better off with a retired prosecutor (active prosecutors can’t practice privately). The only risk to Haugen is that a retired prosecutor might lay out the real reason he’d rather be dead. And it has nothing to do with the “unfairness” of the death penalty as Haugen has claimed.

It’s a quality of life issue.

In my first year as a reporter at the newspaper in Salem, I discovered that Oregon State Penitentiary was a self-contained community unto itself and nothing like I thought a prison would be. On my first visit, the warden (the late Hoyt Cupp, a fascinating character who looked like a convict out of central casting) gave me a tour. I was astonished at how much freedom of movement the inmates had. Some of them had jobs to go to, classes to attend, errands to handle. They moved freely about designated areas of the prison. Occasionally one of them would walk up to Mr. Cupp and speak to him. They had more access to the boss than some workers in corporate America.

Death Row is nothing like that. The inmate is in a cell most of the time. There is minimal contact with other inmates — and little opportunity for scoring contraband. Haugen earned his spot on Death Row by killing an inmate he thought was going to rat him out for using drugs.

As any prisoner of war or Jaycee Dugard could tell you, humans can be incredibly resilient, making a life out of little, if there is hope. Haugen had hope – and drugs – when he was serving life with the possibility of parole for raping and beating to death a woman.

He killed his own hopes, and the likelihood of being paroled one day, when he stabbed to death another inmate. He wasn’t concerned about rotting in prison until he landed on Death Row.

As Haugen has figured out by now, on Death Row execution is almost beside the point.

– Pamela Fitzsimmons