May 5
MISSOURI:
Law and order----Attorney general's office must pay $40k for defense team's
sleuth in Missouri death-penalty case
Lawyers for Pablo Serrano-Vitorino, an undocumented immigrant and Mexican
national, say sending an investigator to Mexico to research his childhood and
background is key to providing him the best defense in his pending murder trial
in St. Louis.
And in an unusual ruling, a St. Louis judge has ordered the Missouri attorney
general's office to pay the bulk of the cost of that defense team's sleuth.
The Missouri Public Defender's office is representing Serrano-Vitorino of
murdering a man in Montgomery County, Mo., in 2016. The public defender system
is financially strapped, they say; the office doesn't have its own "mitigation
specialist" who can speak Spanish, travel to Mexico and do the necessary
investigation, partly because it's so dangerous there.
So they found a woman who could do the work for them: At a price of $59,000.
St. Louis Circuit Judge Steven Ohmer ruled earlier this year - and reaffirmed
on Friday - that the attorney general's office has to pay up to $40,000 toward
the bill. The state appeals court and the Missouri Supreme Court have upheld
Ohmer's decision.
Ohmer concedes he's never made prosecutors pay for a defense investigation
before. "It's a very unique situation," the judge said Friday. But he said the
case poses several unique challenges.
Serrano-Vitorino, 42, is accused of killing four people in Kansas and, while
fleeing to Missouri, his truck broke down in Montgomery County. Prosecutors
allege he killed Randy Nordman while looking for another vehicle. The Nordman
home is just off Interstate 70. Serrano-Vitorino's trial was moved to St. Louis
on a change of venue.
A trial for the Kansas crimes would follow any Missouri trial. He is there with
4 counts of 1st-degree murder in the deaths of Jeremy Waters, 36; Michael
Capps, 41; and brothers Clint Harter, 27, and Austin Harter, 29.
Serrano-Vitorino lived next door to Capps; he allegedly burst into his home
with a rifle and shot all 4 men.
The killings received nationwide attention in the ongoing debate over legal and
illegal immigration. Nordman's widow testified at a U.S. Senate committee
hearing that discussed potential missteps of federal immigration officials. A
lawsuit is pending in Kansas over the issue.
The trial in St. Louis was set to begin this fall and last nearly a month.
However, in court Friday, Ohmer said the trial won't begin until October 2019.
He pushed it back a year at the request of the public defender's office because
the lead defense attorney, Donald Catlett, is retiring June 1. The public
defender's office will have to hire a replacement and bring him up to speed,
said Heather Vodnansky of the public defender's office.
3 relatives of Nordman sat in Ohmer's courtroom for the latest hearing. They
listened to the wranglings over who would pay for an investigator to go to
Mexico.
Serrano-Vitorino was in court too, looking haggard, wearing the orange jail
jumpsuit with his hands shackled. He speaks only Spanish, so a court-ordered
interpreter was at his side.
Afterward, one of Nordman's relatives, a man, told defense lawyer Vodnansky:
"Just get the show on the road. That's all we're asking. Quit delaying."
Ohmer earlier from the bench also seemed frustrated with the length of time the
case is taking to come to trial. "This has drug on here long enough," the judge
said.
Serrano-Vitorino's attorneys said in court filings earlier this year that it
was important for them to be able to conduct a proper background investigation
on their client, because the state is seeking the death penalty.
"Without access to evidence regarding Pablo's mental health, medical, and
social histories available only in Mexico, as well as character evidence
available only through his family and friends who only speak Spanish, the jury
will be deprived of mitigating evidence that it is constitutionally required to
consider," the filings said.
The mitigation specialist has to spend "a great deal of time" interviewing his
relatives, teachers, employers and others important in his life, the filing
said.
In addition, the investigator has to collect medical records and other
documents in Mexico.
Such investigations are time-consuming in any death-penalty case but even more
so, his lawyers say, when the evidence is in Mexico. Records might not be easy
to find and the investigator might have to seek out "alternative sources for
records like pharmacists and folk healers."
Mexico doesn't have databases to find witnesses, roads are unpaved and unmarked
and the investigator not only must speak the language but know the culture, his
lawyers argued.
Serrano-Vitorino lived in Mexico until about the age of 17. He was convicted in
March 2003 in Los Angeles of making a terrorist threat, sentenced to two years
in prison and deported to Mexico on April 5, 2004. It's unclear why he was back
in the United States or why, after subsequent run-ins with the law, he remained
here.
The purpose of the mitigation process in a death-penalty case is for defense
team to try to show circumstances in a defendant's background that might call
for a sentence less than death. They look at education, the environment he grew
up in - was it rich or poor, crime-ridden or not; was he exposed to toxic
chemicals on a farm; does the birth record show if he was a low-weight baby.
They look for psychological problems in the family and any history of drugs or
alcohol abuse. It could take interviews with upward of 400 people to learn the
kinds of details in preparation for a death-penalty case, a public defender's
office official said.
The only person the public defender's office found who is qualified to do all
that, they say, is a woman named Kristina L. Bishop, who charges $125 an hour
for investigation work and $75 an hour for travel. Her investigation would take
her to Juarez, Chihuahua, Durango, and Zacatecas, Mexico, and her total
estimate was $59,000. In explaining the dangers of the area, the public
defender's office told the St. Louis judge that nationwide murders there hit a
record high, averaging 70 a day in May.
Michael Barrett, who is head of the Missouri public defender system, had said
earlier in court, "I have no way of ensuring the safety of employees if I send
them to Mexico."
Since the 1990s, the public defender's office in Missouri has had its own
in-house mitigation specialists, and they earn $38,000 to $42,000 a year. The
cost of hiring Bishop for this one case is more than in-house specialists make
in a year, and they work on more than 1 case a year. It's nearly as much as
what an assistant public defender earns with about 5 years' experience.
Assistant Attorney General Kevin Zoellner asked Ohmer on Friday to reconsider
his ruling that makes the state attorney general's office pay. He said it could
viewed as a "troubling aspect" of a death-penalty case if prosecutors are
footing the bill for the defense.
Zoellner suggested that the public defender ask the Missouri Legislature for
more money, or that perhaps the judicial circuit in St. Louis pay for Bishop's
investigation. But Ohmer wouldn't budge. Ohmer said he hopes Bishop can do her
work in Mexico and have a report ready by early September, when the judge meets
with lawyers for an update on the case. He said all bills should go to the
attorney general's office for reimbursement up to $40,000.
(source: stltoday.com)
ARIZONA:
Death row exonerees gather at state capitol to call for an end to the death
penalty----20 people once on death row, who were found innocent and released,
stood together at the state capitol Friday, hoping to abolish the death
penalty.
Over 20 death row exonerees were in Phoenix Friday for the Witness to Innocence
Annual Gathering.
"Who are we? WITNESS TO INNOCENCE. What do we want? JUSTICE. When do we want
it? NOW," chanted the small crowd at the state capitol.
Since 1973, 162 people on death row have been found innocent and released. 20
of them stood together today, hoping to change the system.
"Hopefully today is the day that we leave here and say, capital punishment is
no more," said Kwame Ajamu, chairman of the board for Witness To Innocence.
Some shared their stories.
"I spent 3 years on death row, innocent, and I received a lot of support --
close to 400 letters a week," said Joaquin Jose Martinez, acquitted of murder
on June 6, 2001.
Others used analogies.
"We see it all the time in baseball games. A man slides into 2nd base, he's
out. Upon further review, he's safe. You execute a man that didn't do the
crime, there's no coming back," said Natchson Fields, acquitted of murder in
2009.
Also on hand was the 100th inmate exonerated from death row, Ray Krone.
"The state called me a monster, called me the snaggletooth killer. In 1992 I
was convicted of a murder based on a bite mark and sentenced to death. I had
never been in trouble, 6 years active duty in the Air Force, 7 years at the
post office, and I was the monster they were gonna kill," said Krone.
Now, Krone is the co-founder of Witness To Innocence, which aims to abolish the
death penalty.
"I'll tell you the prosecution may rest but we can't, we've been there, we've
done that, we are here, we are going to do this," chanted Krone.
The daughter of exoneree Delbert Tibbs shared her thoughts as well.
"I know that people make mistakes regularly, and that's an OK thing in general,
until someone's life is on the line, and then it becomes inexcusable," said
Mahalia Abeo Tibbs.
Religious leaders were also on hand.
"You must rescue those taken off to death. We know we have to be tough on
crime, but it has to be done in a way that is effective and just and this is
not just," said Rabbi Dr. Shmuly Yanklowitz.
According to a recent Gallup report, a nationwide survey of 1,028 adults
polled, 55 % said they are in favor of the death penalty for a person convicted
of murder. That is down from 60 % in 2016, and support is in a steady decline.
The exonerees will also be at Franciscan Renewal Center in Scottsdale for a Q &
A session.
(source: NBC News)
OREGON:
In the crosshairs of conscience: John Kitzhaber's death penalty reckoning
To cope with his dread, John Kitzhaber opened his leather-bound journal and
began to write.
It was a little past 9 on the morning of Nov. 22, 2011. Gary Haugen had dropped
his appeals. A Marion County judge had signed the murderer's death warrant,
leaving Kitzhaber, a former emergency room doctor, to decide Haugen's fate. The
49-year-old would soon die by lethal injection if the governor didn't
intervene.
Kitzhaber was exhausted, having been unable to sleep the night before, but he
needed to call the families of Haugen's victims.
"I know my decision will delay the closure they need and deserve," he wrote.
The son of University of Oregon English professors, Kitzhaber began writing
each day in his journal in the early 1970s. The practice helped him organize
his thoughts and, on that particular morning, gather his courage.
Kitzhaber first dialed the widow of David Polin, an inmate Haugen beat and
stabbed to death in 2003 while already serving a life sentence for a prior
murder. Haugen received the death penalty for Polin's killing.
The widow was merely stunned, not hostile, in response to Kitzhaber's
unexpected call.
The next call would be more challenging.
In 1981, Haugen raped and killed Mary Archer, a young mother. Kitzhaber dialed
Ard Pratt, her ex-husband and the father of their 3 children. The former
Multnomah County sheriff's deputy answered the call at his home.
Kitzhaber told him he couldn't go through with the execution. Haugen would
live.
In Pratt's mind, the governor was copping out.
Kitzhaber would have to live with the decision for the rest of his life, Pratt
warned. "This has torn our family apart. It has ruined our lives," Pratt said.
"We want closure."
"Be a man," barked Pratt. "Do what's right."
After he hung up, Kitzhaber remained at his writing desk.
John Kitzhaber, M.D., had dealt with angry, grieving family members before. As
a young doctor, he had cried the first time a patient died on his watch. That
death - of a young man fatally injured in a motorcycle crash - haunted
Kitzhaber.
But the calls that November morning were the most difficult of his life.
With the family calls behind him, he began to cry.
Gary Haugen was 19 when he raped and murdered Mary Archer. He would later
receive the death penalty for killing an inmate.
He understood Pratt's warning. Kitzhaber was already living with decisions that
preyed on him: allowing the executions of 2 death row inmates during his 1st
term. Then Haugen unexpectedly gave up his appeals, putting Kitzhaber's
conscience in the crosshairs again.
This month marks more than 2 decades since Oregon's last execution, but the
death penalty continues to cast a long shadow in the state. For Kitzhaber, his
internal struggle drew on his deep emotional response to his role in putting 2
men to death and brought him to his eventual moral reckoning, which he revealed
to Oregonians that November day.
AN UNWANTED REPRIEVE
Arriving at the last minute for his public announcement in Salem, Kitzhaber was
so emotionally frayed that he was trembling.
"Oregonians have a fundamental belief in fairness and justice - in swift and
certain justice," he told the waiting press. "The death penalty as practiced in
Oregon is neither fair nor just; and it is not swift or certain. It is not
applied equally to all. It is a perversion of justice that the single best
indicator of who will and will not be executed has nothing to do with the
circumstances of a crime or the findings of a jury. The only factor that
determines whether someone sentenced to death in Oregon is actually executed is
that they volunteer.
"It is time for Oregon to consider a different approach. I refuse to be a part
of this compromised and inequitable system any longer."
Kitzhaber granted an unwanted reprieve to Haugen. The governor also stated his
own desire to have the death penalty replaced by a sentence of life without the
possibility of parole - "true life" as it's called. Kitzhaber had the right to
commute Haugen's sentence to true life. He, in fact, had the right to commute
the sentences of all 37 inmates on Oregonian's death row, but he decided not
to.
"The policy of this state on capital punishment is not mine alone to decide,"
he said.
Like Kitzhaber, Oregonians have long had an ambivalent relationship with the
death penalty. Oregon voters decided to abolish capital punishment in 1914, and
then again in 1964. Twice reinstating it in subsequent years, clearly their
minds had changed, too.
John Kitzhaber was emotionally drained when he announced his decision to impose
a moratorium on the death penalty in 2011.
Hours after the conclusion of the press conference, Kitzhaber returned to his
writing desk and the solace of his journals. "I am numb," he began.
He had followed his oath as governor, to uphold Oregon's constitution, twice.
With Haugen, no longer would he do so. He turned instead to his physician's
oath. First, do no harm.
"It is so unfair to them," Kitzhaber wrote of the victim's families. "And yet I
believe I made the right decision."
THE GUN AND KNIFE CLUB
Kitzhaber knew what it was to have blood on his hands.
To win a regional science competition during his senior year of high school,
Kitzhaber put together a device that kept organs - like the heart and lungs -
alive outside the body. Of course, the device required a supply of blood, so
Kitzhaber would stop by a nearby slaughterhouse in the mornings before class.
"My blood collection process would make me late for school, and my sort-of
blood-spattered arrival during 1st period math class cemented my reputation as
a nerd and probably a dangerous one," he said.
Young John had always gravitated instead toward the sciences. After graduating
from South Eugene High School and then Dartmouth, he returned to Oregon for
medical school.
His internship in emergency medicine took him to the largest trauma hospital in
Denver - a place sarcastically referred to as the gun-and-knife club.
Despite it all, he loved practicing medicine. His patients - frightened,
confused, in pain - automatically put their trust in him.
"I know what it feels like to have someone come into the ER and you actually
save their life," he said. "It's an incredibly deep, spiritual feeling of
gratitude and accomplishment. It's humbling."
Simply put, death was failure, an "adverse outcome" as doctors say.
He came to fear the process of informing loved ones that a relative had died on
his watch. He referred to it as "walking across the hall."
For Kitzhaber, calling Ard Pratt and Polin's widow felt a lot like walking
across the hall. Paradoxically, the message was not death, but life.
A VOLATILE RELATIONSHIP
There is another person equally intertwined with Oregonian's ambivalence toward
capital punishment - Gary Haugen himself.
He was born with fetal alcohol syndrome in March of 1962 to a mother who
stripped at a local bar and a father who suffered from PTSD.
"My dad used to beat me with his fists - my brothers and I - like we were grown
men," he said during a telephone interview, one of several. "I'm surprised I
ever made the age of 7 let alone 18, 21 or the age I am now."
The situation in Haugen's childhood home got bad enough that he and his
siblings were eventually removed by the police and placed into foster care.
Haugen was living in a foster home near Mount Tabor when he met Ard Pratt's
daughter, Carolyn. "We were, I think, in 10th grade or something, and it was -
it was young love," says Haugen. "It was, like, my first love."
But like his own father, Haugen was an alcoholic and physically abusive.
Carolyn decided to end their on-again, off-again relationship after one episode
during which Haugen hit her in the head with a brick, but not before she got
pregnant at 16 with their child.
"He was trying to control me basically, and I'd fight back," Carolyn says of
the abuse. "He was just angry all the time."
Although her parents might not have known the extent of the violence, they knew
enough to want Haugen away from their daughter. Of Ard, Haugen says, "I can't
tell you how many times the guy put me on the ground with a 9 [millimeter
handgun] in the back of my head saying, 'If you keep going out with my daughter
...' and I'm like, 'Dude your daughter is the one coming over to my place -
wherever I'm at - coming to me. Come on, quit it. And I'm like 'What's so bad
with me? I've never done anything to anybody.'"
Ard denies doing this, but added, "I probably should have."
At 17, having walked away from his foster home, Haugen was homeless. He slept
on friends' couches and stole things large and small, but his life revolved
around the activities that, he felt, provided a release for his anger and pain:
getting high, having sex, and fighting. A regular at neighborhood house
parties, Haugen would simply start a fight "if I wasn't feeling it," he
remembers.
The end result was a house in ruins. "It's not cool, nothing I'm proud of. It's
just the way I was," he says. "I guess deep down, as a kid, I just wanted to be
loved, and I couldn't find it the way that I felt I wanted it - true love; so I
found it through drugs and sex and fighting."
When Carolyn decided to give their daughter up for adoption, Haugen was in the
military, having recently enlisted, though he quickly went AWOL. He received
just a small photograph of her in the mail, he remembers bitterly. It's the
only knowledge Haugen has of her. Carolyn, however, has recently begun to forge
a relationship with that daughter. The girl, now grown, has a family of her
own, and Haugen's blue eyes.
THE RAPE AND MURDER
On May 21, 1981, a Thursday, the 19-year-old Haugen decided to go over to the
house where Carolyn lived with her mother. He was jealous and had been
drinking. He wanted to see if he could find evidence Carolyn was dating someone
else. He figured the house would be empty.
When he arrived at the small bungalow on Northeast Hoyt, Haugen broke in and
started to go through his ex-girlfriend's things, becoming more and more
distraught.
He vowed that he would pummel the other guy, should he find anything. Who do I
got to smash out now? he remembers thinking.
A white 1970 Ford sedan pulled into the driveway, catching Haugen off-guard.
Pratt's mother was driving.
"I'm like I can't have a confrontation with her right now. I just can't,"
Haugen recalls. "I've been sitting there crying for I don't know how long."
Haugen was familiar with the layout of the house. He was expecting that she
would enter it by walking up the steps next to the driveway, so he dashed the
other way - into the foyer.
Instead, the front door opened.
Shocked and angry, Pratt's mother, Mary Archer, demanded to know what Haugen
was doing in her home.
"I hit her. I hit her with this bat you know. And I think I hit her with pretty
much everything in the house," he says.
Haugen also raped and sodomized Archer.
"I just blamed Mary Archer," he said, "for everything that had gone wrong in my
life."
NOWHERE TO RUN
Early that evening, Archer's son, James, called the police, having found his
mother's bloodied, pummeled corpse. Ard Pratt was the 2nd to arrive on the
scene of his ex-wife's murder, although he never actually went inside the
house.
That day, driving Archer's stolen car, Haugen briefly thought about heading to
his grandparents' place in California.
"I got to the on-ramp and I'm like, really, are - why are you running? You just
destroyed a human life and you just destroyed an entire family - any
relationship with your daughter. You destroyed your own future, your own
history. I mean where you going to run to?" Haugen says.
He ultimately bought some liquor and just drove around Portland.
At 1:24 a.m., Portland police spotted Archer's car on 57th and Mitchell, a few
miles south of her home, after Haugen turned in front of a squad car.
He remembers the arresting officer placing a shotgun to the back of his head.
To this day, he wonders why he didn't make a move, forcing the officer's hand.
From the Multnomah County jail, Haugen called Ard Pratt's home and reached his
ex-girlfriend.
He apologized to her repeatedly.
"I didn't know what else to do," Haugen says.
Held without bail, Haugen initially pleaded innocent to all the charges against
him, but, eventually, he agreed to a guilty plea for murder in exchange for
dismissal of the 4 other charges, which included rape and burglary. He would be
eligible for parole in his mid-30s after serving 15 years.
Haugen remembers the sentencing judge's advice: "You should still be a young
man when you get out of prison. I just hope you make the best of your time
while you're in there."
THE 2ND KILLING
Instead he would kill again in prison, and this time get the death penalty.
Although Haugen relished fighting at house parties, he found that, in prison,
fighting was a necessity from the moment he entered. In this world, Haugen did
what he had to.
"It got to the point where I ended up hooking up with a bunch of old-school
cons," he says. "All we did is drive iron: work out."
As the years passed, Haugen took advantage of opportunities in general
population at the state penitentiary in Salem. He built a music department with
his close friend Jason Van Brumwell.
Van Brumwell received a life sentence for his role in what became known as the
"Dari Mart murder." He and some accomplices robbed a Eugene convenience store
and beat the workers on duty. One of them died.
Inside the pen, Van Brumwell played the guitar, while Haugen played the drums.
The 2 men enjoyed smoking smuggled pot. Prison officials, however, ultimately
found out, and they suspected that another inmate, David "Sleepy" Polin, had
been the informant.
About 8 a.m. on Sept. 2, 2003, security cameras captured images of Haugen and
Van Brumwell with Polin near the music room. Haugen's T shirt hid some sort of
object.
Polin was stabbed 84 times; his skull was also fractured. A camera recorded
Haugen and Van Brumwell dragging Polin's lifeless body into the music room.
Nearby, an alcove was smeared with blood.
Haugen has long maintained he acted in self-defense, a story that jurors
rejected.
"That could've been me on the floor. People don't get it, and people didn't
want to hear it," says Haugen. "The only people who know what went down in that
room were David and me, period. We were the only two in that room."
Haugen and Van Brumwell were convicted of aggravated murder, which, unlike mere
murder, allows for a sentence of death in Oregon. The criteria for aggravated
murder includes the murder of a child or a police officer, torturing a victim
before killing him or her, using an explosive, or, like Haugen and Van
Brumwell, having been previously convicted of murder.
Both were sentenced to death. Both remain on death row.
'IT STILL HAUNTS ME'
Years before Kitzhaber's 1st term, Oregon's death penalty had bedeviled
previous governors.
Devoutly religious Mark O. Hatfield personally opposed capital punishment.
"Having been governor when we had an execution, I can tell you it still haunts
me," he told the Mercury in 2000. "However, when you swear to uphold the
constitution of the State of Oregon you swear to uphold all of the laws - not
just the laws you agree with."
Hatfield, who served 2 terms as governor, allowed the 1962 execution of LeRoy
McGahuey, a 40-year-old logger who had killed his girlfriend and her 2-year-old
son.
Mark O. Hatfield allowed an execution as governor but came to regret it and
worked to repeal the death penalty in Oregon.
Hatfield felt that he played an important role in the repeal of the death
penalty a little over a year later, telling the Mercury, "I had my press
secretary have as many press people there to witness it as possible; reporting
it in all its gory detail. By making it a broadly based experience for all
people - by not having it at midnight - we were able to garner enough support
to get it repealed."
Hatfield was the primary sponsor of another attempt, which proved unsuccessful,
to repeal capital punishment - which had been reauthorized by Oregon voters.
Even before Hatfield, Gov. Robert Holmes was well-known for commuting death
sentences to life in prison in the 1950s, based on his own moral opposition to
capital punishment.
However, aware of Holmes' feelings, the parents of a murdered 14-year-old boy
filed a civil action in circuit court to prevent the governor from commuting
the death sentence of their son's killer. The Oregon Supreme Court sided with
Holmes. The court ruled that the Constitution conferred to the governor
unlimited power to grant reprieves, pardons, and commutations.
In characteristic fashion, Holmes commuted the killer's sentence to life in
prison, but decades later the court's decision would help John Kitzhaber and
haunt Gary Haugen.
In regard to capital punishment, Oregon stands out in one way - its sustained
ambivalence.
"Most other states long ago settled the question one way or the other," read a
2016 report commissioned by Gov. Kate Brown. "Only Oregon voters spent the
twentieth century reversing themselves."
During the early decades of statehood, Oregon allowed local executions by
hanging. Only men were supposed to attend these public spectacles. After women
watched a double execution from a Portland rooftop in the early 20th century,
hangings were brought indoors into the state penitentiary. In 1912, voters
overwhelmingly struck down an attempt to repeal capital punishment. Not long
after, women were granted suffrage, doubling the number of Oregon voters.
This new electorate abolished capital punishment in 1914 by the thinnest of
margins: 157 votes. Just 5 years later, however, voters reversed themselves on
the issue, electing to restore capital punishment.
Executions continued into the 1960s. But after Leroy McGahuey was gassed to
death by dropping pellets of sodium cyanide into a container of sulfuric acid
below his metal chair, Oregon voters again chose to ban the death penalty.
In 1978, reversing themselves once more, Oregonians voted in favor of capital
punishment - only to have it declared unconstitutional a few years later.
McGahuey's 1962 execution, the one pro-life Gov. Mark O. Hatfield had allowed,
was the last before the 1984 vote.
'I'M HURTING'
The collision of John Kitzhaber's moral reckoning and Gary Haugen's desire for
execution would not have occurred except for the murder of a 14-year-old girl
that sparked so much outrage it solidified Oregon as a death penalty state,
once again.
On the afternoon of Sunday, Aug. 10, 1980, Charmel Ulrich, a 14-year-old
cheerleader and softball player, and her friend Laurie Leach went for a walk
around their Sherwood neighborhood.
"There weren't robberies. There weren't shootings. It was a safe, pleasant
place to be," Sue Leach, Laurie's mother, says. "I'm the one who let them go
for a walk. They should be able to go for a walk."
On the country road bisecting the quiet neighborhood, a white station wagon
pulled up to the girls. Inside were 3 young men, claiming to need directions.
The passengers quickly got out of the car. Laurie, who ran track, sprinted
away. One of the abductors tried but failed to catch her. Charmel, however, was
forced, kicking and screaming, into the car, which drove off. The man who
captured the girl raped her in the car.
Laurie reached a neighbor's home and called her mother. "My daughter just
escaped by her own gut instincts. She was a good runner," Sue says. When her
husband arrived home, he grabbed a hunting rifle, got in his car and gave
chase, along with several other fathers from the neighborhood. By then, the
white station wagon was long gone.
Two hours later, the kidnappers allowed Charmel to call her parents' home from
a pay phone in front of a grocery store near Lincoln City. Her parents weren't
home, so the hysterical girl tried Sue Leach, who answered the call.
In tears and disoriented, the 14-year-old said, "I'm hurting."
Unable to get out the word "raped," Leach instead asked Charmel if she had been
abused.
The girl confirmed that she had, before being forced to hang up the phone.
For 11 days, there was no sign of - or word from - Charmel Ulrich.
Keith Ulrich, Charmel's father, leaves her memorial service surrounded by
relatives.
She was found dead next to a dirt road in the Coast Range, east of Waldport.
One of her kidnappers had agreed to lead the police to Charmel's body.
Her throat had been slit. The driver of the white station wagon, Gary Allen
Smith, told police that because the young teen didn't die fast enough, he
stabbed her in the back.
A DEATH PENALTY CHAMPION
During that brutally long, 11-day waiting-period, Delight Louise Streich, a
young mother of 3, passed the small farm of her neighbors, Keith and Patricia
Ulrich.
Dedi, as she was known, barely could stand to imagine what the Ulrichs were
going through. Their pain must have surely been unbearable. She was comforted
by the fact that Oregon had the death penalty, even though it hadn't been used
in 18 years.
She felt sure, though, whoever did this to Charmel Ulrich would be executed.
However, Smith decided to waive his right to a trial by jury the day after the
Oregon Supreme Court unanimously ruled in 1981 that capital punishment was
unconstitutional. The prosecution had been planning to seek the death penalty
for Smith, but the judge had no choice but to give him a life sentence. His
accomplices received life sentences, too.
Dedi Streich was appalled by the Supreme Court's ruling. And she became even
more so after watching a news segment about the murder of a 3-year-old from
Scappoose. Indignant, Streich sat down to write a letter with her then-husband.
The letter, meant only to be read by their Sherwood neighbors, championed
capital punishment.
Unexpectedly, the letter gained momentum and was ultimately distributed
statewide - becoming the basis for Streich's petition to change Oregon's
Constitution to allow for capital punishment.
With the help of other death penalty supporters, Streich gathered enough
signatures to place 2 measures on the ballot. Measure 6 would make capital
punishment exempt from 2 sections of the Oregon Constitution that contained
core tenets of human rights.
It passed by nearly 130,000 votes. Measure 7 required either the death penalty,
or life without the possibility of parole for especially heinous murders. In
her argument in favor of the measure, which appeared in the voters' pamphlet,
Streich wrote, "The deterrent value of capital punishment in Oregon should save
lives of all our citizens."
It was overwhelmingly approved. Capital punishment was again made legal.
'PLEASE GIVE ME YOUR CODE WORD'
27 years later, when Kitzhaber's attorney Liani Reeves walked into his office
to tell him that Gary Haugen was dropping his appeals, the governor was
flabbergasted. Really? Kitzhaber thought. Not again.
During Kitzhaber's 2nd year as governor, death row inmate Douglas Wright had
dropped his appeals. Wright had committed the so-called "Warm Springs Murders,"
killing three adults and a 10-year-old boy. He dumped their bodies on a remote
corner of the reservation.
Douglas Wright was executed after he dropped his appeals.
Morally, Kitzhaber was opposed to the death penalty, having voted against
Measure 6 and Measure 7. As the date of Wright's 1996 execution grew nearer,
Kitzhaber remained conflicted.
"I never expected to be in the position to put somebody to death, given what
I'd been doing for the last 20 years," said Kitzhaber, who had just stopped
practicing medicine.
The situation with Wright didn't seem entirely real until a few weeks before
the execution, when workers came to install two old-fashioned landline phones
in Kitzhaber's office. One reached the attorney general; the other provided a
direct line to the execution chamber.
Using either phone, Kitzhaber could immediately stop the executioners.
On the night of the execution, Kitzhaber was alone in his office within earshot
of protesters outside. The 2 newly installed phones were regularly tested ahead
of the scheduled time of midnight.
Kitzhaber answered the phone to the attorney general's office when it was
tested at 8 o'clock, 9'o'clock, 10 o'clock, and 11 o'clock, but he had to
answer the phone to the execution chamber even more frequently: every
half-hour.
"I'd never ever been in that situation or felt those feelings before,"
Kitzhaber said. "It's pretty easy to support the death penalty in the abstract,
but when you're sitting there and you have to make that decision, it takes on a
different nature."
At 11:52 p.m., the execution chamber phone rang. It was the head of the
Department of Corrections.
"Governor, please give me your code word," he said.
"Tredway," Kitzhaber responded. Luke Tredway was the 10-year-old boy who was
Wright's final victim.
"Wright," replied the corrections official, using his own code word. "This is
to inform you that we are about to proceed with the execution of Douglas F.
Wright by lethal injection."
"I understand," Kitzhaber said.
Because of his medical training, Kitzhaber began to think about what was
happening: the gauge of needle being used to transfer the lethal drugs, the
progression of how the organs shut down.
After almost half an hour, the last call was made. Kitzhaber was informed that
Douglas Wright had just been pronounced dead at 12:16 a.m. on Sept. 6, 1996.
Phones near the execution chamber connected to the governor's office.
THE HARRY MOORE CASE
Among legal scholars who study capital punishment, Douglas Wright is what's
known as a volunteer - a death row inmate who allows execution by dropping his
or her appeals. Approximately 11 % of inmates executed in the United States
are, in fact, volunteers. The data has uncovered an interesting phenomenon: 1
volunteer can beget another.
So it's not surprising that less than 9 months after Wright's execution -
Oregon's 1st in nearly 34 years - Kitzhaber's in-house counsel again showed up
to inform him that another death row inmate, Harry Moore, was dropping his
appeals.
Moore, who, in the course of his life, was in marriages with 2 separate
relatives (his nieces), shot and killed his half-sister and her ex-husband.
That spring, the process in Salem repeated itself. There was the installation
of the phones, the test calls, the code word, and Kitzhaber's own moral
calculus.
"With Moore, I really began to sort of juxtapose my medical training, which
really had been to save lives, with what was going on, and the fact that I'd
also taken an oath when I became a physician. In a sense, I was violating that
oath to uphold another oath," Kitzhaber says.
On May 16, 1997, Moore was put to death. Alone in his office after receiving
the final call at 12:23 a.m., Kitzhaber wept.
"I feel like I killed those 2 guys just as much as the person who pushed the
plunger," says Kitzhaber. "I made the wrong decision."
'HE'S JUST DYING'
7 years after the executions of Douglas Wright and Harry Moore, Kitzhaber,
traveled to one of his favorite places in the world - a remote, roadless
section of the Rogue River, where he had time to think. He had just completed
his 2nd term as governor.
Accompanied by an East Coast friend, Kitzhaber floated downstream and camped
along the bank. It was a familiar scene for Kitzhaber, who had long had an
affinity for rivers.
"One of my earliest experiences is my dad took me down to a place called
Boulder Flats on the North Umpqua River and that's the first time I actually
saw a wild salmon spawning," he remembers. "I've always felt that the life
cycle for the salmon was such a beautiful metaphor, not only for the
relationship between life and death, but also the relationship that each
generation has for the next."
For his companion, however, everything was new.
The friend spotted a big male Chinook - its fins torn, its back blotched with
the fungus of decay. "My god what's wrong with that fish," he exclaimed.
"Nothing," Kitzhaber instinctively responded. "He's just dying."
That simple exchange proved to be seminal, forcing the then-former governor to
rethink capital punishment.
Although death was viewed as an adverse outcome in medicine, Kitzhaber realized
that there's a difference between dying as a part of the life process and dying
prematurely because of a wreck - like the first young patient he had lost after
a motorcycle crash or death row inmates injected with lethal drugs.
Kitzhaber never thought that he'd return to politics. "I was pretty bruised,"
he says. "I'd had eight years of Republicans controlling both houses. I was
given the name of Dr. No for vetoing 400 bills - more than all previous
governors combined."
But he found himself campaigning again in 2010. At a debate in Salem, he was
asked about capital punishment. "You just don't know what it's like," he tried
to explain, "to sit there and know you can stop it."
For the first time, he said publicly what he'd long known privately. "I wasn't
going to let another one go through."
With Haugen, he kept his promise.
LEAVING OFFICE
Kitzhaber's return to politics was surely not as surprising to him, however, as
his forced exit in February of 2015, having only a month earlier sworn to
uphold the Constitution as Oregon's governor for an unprecedented fourth time.
John Kitzhaber was elected to a fourth term but he resigned after questions
arose about conflicts of interest.
By allowing his fianc???e, a green energy consultant, to advocate environmental
policies as an official adviser in his administration, Kitzhaber violated
Oregon law, the state ethics commission found. Kitzhaber maintains that he
didn't intend for Cylvia Hayes to benefit financially from the arrangement, but
ethics laws don't consider intent, according to the commission.
"What I vigorously dispute, however, is that any of this was done for the
purpose of gaining a financial benefit or avoiding a financial detriment, or
for the benefit of her clients," Kitzhaber told the commission.
Whereas Kitzhaber freely, if painfully, admitted responsibility for the deaths
of Douglas Wright and Harry Moore, he bristled at the perceived conflict of
interest involving Hayes.
In announcing his resignation, Kitzhaber, mired in an ethics scandal, listed
his accomplishments in office: "I am proud that Oregon has not invoked the
death penalty during the last 4 years on my watch."
AN UNEASY LIMBO
For his part, Haugen remains in existential limbo on death row. Younger than
many of his fellow condemned inmates, Haugen is now 56. He believes Oregonians
need to make a choice. "You either get rid of the death penalty or you start
killing people," he says.
The system of capital punishment has not stopped in Oregon, despite Brown's
decision to extend the moratorium invoked by Kitzhaber.
"The bottom line is between her (Brown) and Kitzhaber, it's been seven years
since they put a hold on the death penalty, on the actual murdering of people,
and they're continuing to charge people, try people, and convict people, and
everybody's getting paid," Haugen said. "My last attorney was getting paid $287
an hour. That's just for him, for me - let alone all the mitigation specialists
and the investigators."
A 2016 Lewis and Clark Law School study found that capital cases cost Oregon
$800,000 to $1 million more, on average, than other aggravated murder cases
without death as a sentencing option.
35 inmates are on Oregon's death row. 12 have been there since Harry Moore's
execution. The longest-serving is Randy Guzek. He's spent more than 30 years on
death row. The average stay is over 16 years.
But those inmates are unlikely to be executed. The last 4 inmates to die on
death row in Oregon succumbed natural causes. Many more have had their sentence
reversed in court or commuted by the governor.
Since 1930, only 21 people have been executed in Oregon. By comparison, of the
states that have had capital punishment at some point during that time, the
average is 121.
To Haugen, the fact that the industry of capital punishment no longer even
produces an execution is evidence of corruption. "It's just a money-making
scheme for everybody. I mean everybody's getting paid from the judge, the
secretaries, the lawyers, even the paperboy's getting paid when he's delivering
the news to the house," Haugen says. "It is fruitful for them to not kill
people but get paid."
He can't fathom why all his fellow death row inmates don't drop their own
appeals. "Force this thing on these people," he says. "Force them to bring
attention to a systemically flawed death penalty statute."
Haugen insists that his crusade for his own execution wasn't about wanting to
die. His goal is to have capital punishment abolished. Kitzhaber shares that
goal, even though he and Haugen were diametrically opposed in terms of how to
advance it.
For Haugen, it was through his own execution. For Kitzhaber, it was stopping
Haugen's execution - and all others.
(source: The Oregonian)
USA:
Death penalty sought for 2 inmates accused of killing another inmate
Federal prosecuting attorneys in West Virginia have filed notices of intent to
seek the death penalty against 2 inmates accused of fatally stabbing another
inmate.
The Charleston Gazette-Mail reports 29-year-old Michael A. Owle of Cherokee,
North Carolina and 39-year-old Ruben Laurel of San Antonio were inmates in the
U.S. Penitentiary in Hazelton at the time of the killing.
The pair were charged with 1st-degree murder in the 2012 death of 31-year-old
Anthony M. Dallas. Another inmate was stabbed, and they were charged with
assault with a dangerous weapon.
Federal law allows for death sentences for 2st-degree murder convictions for
anyone 18 years and older if certain guidelines are met. The pair also could
face up to 10 years in prison and a fine for the assault.
(source: Associated Press)
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