Held to answer

If you were murdered, would you want your killer executed?

Murder can be a terrible way to die. Even if it’s quick – and it often isn’t – murder is a crime that is stuck on rewind. The killer can revisit his victim’s final moments in his mind anytime he wants to. He can relive it, relish it, embellish it, retell it, rewrite it: The victim was stupid. The victim asked for it. It was meant to be. God could have intervened but didn’t. Oh, well.

A murder victim loses all rights to privacy. He or she becomes the centerpiece of crime scene photos. Their death lives on in autopsy details. “The body was received clad in blue denim jeans … fingernail scrapings were performed … The tongue was protruding and dark black in color due to decompositional change … the body was then undressed for further examination … .”

What would you want for your killer, presuming he was caught and convicted (not all of them are)?

Would you want him to continue living – visiting with loved ones, watching TV, reading, eating a candy bar, negotiating with fellow inmates?

Would those mundane events available to your killer seem like a huge joy compared to death?

We’re advised about the importance of living wills and advance directives. Perhaps we should also declare our thoughts on the death penalty so when a politician like Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber comes along and can’t handle one of the least pleasant tasks of the job – signing a death warrant – we can take the responsibility off of him. The same way an advance directive can force a doctor to acknowledge a patient’s wishes.

Kitzhaber claims he wants a discussion on the death penalty. No, he doesn’t. He’s going after capital punishment the same way he has been going after Measure 11, the voter-approved initiative on mandatory-minimum sentences for serious felonies.

Don’t be surprised if he appoints a “blue ribbon” commission on the death penalty, similar to his Commission on Public Safety, to rubber-stamp what he wants.

What he wants is to steer money away from public safety and towards education and social services. On the face of it that may seem reasonable, but education and social services already take a bigger chunk out of the state budget than public safety – and have less success to show for it.

Kitzhaber’s biggest hurdle to persuading two-thirds of the legislature to overturn Measure 11 will be crime victims. The commission has been laying the groundwork to convince crime victims – and potential crime victims – that crime will stay down even without Measure 11, that it will be safer to let more offenders out of prison and jail, and to send fewer there in the first place.

Consider the exchange at the Nov. 21st meeting of the commission between former Gov. Ted Kulongoski (one of the commissioners), and guest speaker Judge Roger Warren, president emeritus of the National Center for State Courts.

Kulongoski urged Warren to “talk to us about where victim’s rights come in and who actually protects the rights of the victims.”

Warren replied that victim’s rights is one of the purposes of sentencing. It’s doing right by the victim. “If people think the only thing that victims are interested in is punishment they are mistaken. … Victims want to make sure that the offender doesn’t hurt anybody else again.”

That was not the answer Kulongoski was looking for, especially from a judge. The commission is trying hard to build a case that judges don’t have enough power, and prosecutors have too much, courtesy of the victim’s rights movement.

Kulongoski pressed on. Do you see any problem, he asked, in allowing victims to participate with the prosecutor and defense attorneys?

“It is the right thing to do,” Warren said one more time.

Later, he told Kulongoski point-blank: “If you are trying to get me to say the judge is the only important player, you are not going to get me to say that.”

Kulongoski wants victims to trust that judges will do right by them. Why? Because it will lead to less incarceration and be cheaper. In the three public hearings that the commission has held in the past three months, representatives from social service agencies appeared and expressed an interest in getting a cut of public safety money if mandatory minimums are reduced.

Kitzhaber’s discussion on the death penalty will likely focus on dollar signs and avoid talk about whether capital punishment is “unfair.”

There is something in the human psyche – no matter what religion, ethnicity, culture, race or era is in play – that craves justice. It’s why Oregonians reinstated the death penalty when it turned out that “lifers” didn’t do life; some of them got out and killed again. It’s why Oregonians have approved and reaffirmed their support for mandatory minimums for serious felonies.

– Pamela Fitzsimmons

For more on the death penalty:

Haugen’s Media Super Bowl

Living and Rotting on Death Row