Gov. Kate Brown on Thursday said she hasn’t decided whether to call a special session to change Oregon’s new statute limiting death penalty prosecutions to ensure it doesn’t apply to old cases.
In a conference call with reporters, the governor said she doesn’t know when she will make her decision. Brown said her staff is still analyzing the law’s implications on past cases.
“I don’t have enough information to, frankly, make a decision whether to call a special session,” she said.
It was the first time Brown has addressed the heated controversy that erupted after Benjamin Gutman, solicitor general with the Oregon Department of Justice, told prosecutors this month that the law applies to capital cases sent back for new trials or new sentences.
That guidance stunned some prosecutors and family members of victims who said they relied on assurances from lawmakers during the session that Senate Bill 1013 wouldn’t apply to current death row cases.
None of the 31 people on Oregon’s death row have exhausted their court challenges.
“Look, I think everyone is clear that the law was not intended to be retroactive,” Brown said. “I think different folks have different understandings of what retroactive is and that’s what we are trying to analyze.”
Brown said she didn’t intend for the law to be retroactive “and I didn’t fully analyze all of these situations and that is what we are looking at right now.”
The law narrows the definition of aggravated murder, which is the only crime in Oregon eligible for a death sentence. Under the new law, aggravated murder is limited to defendants who kill two or more people as an act of organized terrorism; intentionally and with premeditation kill a child younger than 14; kill another person while locked up in jail or prison for a previous murder; or kill a police, correctional or probation officer.
Rep. Jennifer Williamson, D-Portland, a proponent of the bill, said in a note to fellow lawmakers last week that “there are not multiple interpretations of our new law to limit the death penalty in Oregon.”
Williamson said the law was written as intended; Sen. Floyd Prozanski, D-Eugene, the bill’s other champion, has said he wants to make sure the new law doesn’t apply to death penalty cases sent back to lower courts for new sentencing hearings. He asked the governor to call a special session.
On Thursday Brown said “there are lots of differing opinions and there is a lot of confusion.”
“When I signed the bill, the solicitor general was of the opinion that it was – quote – not retroactive,” the governor said.
In Gutman’s memo to prosecutors this month he indicated he had changed his interpretation of the new law and now believes it has broader application.
“I know that I have had conversations with many of you in which I suggested otherwise but after careful review of the issue … we have concluded that we don’t have a plausible basis for an appeal,” Gutman wrote.
Meanwhile, Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum on Thursday declined to say whether she supports a special session. She said she’ll leave the decision to lawmakers and Brown. She also said she didn’t take a position on the bill as it moved through the session.
The governor said the state’s moratorium on imposing the death penalty stands. She declined to directly answer if she’s considering commuting the death sentences of the 31 people on Oregon’s death row.
In 2015, Brown extended the moratorium originally instated in 2011 by then-Gov. John Kitzhaber. Kitzhaber argued that the death penalty isn’t handed down fairly: Some inmates on death row have committed similar crimes as those who are serving life sentences. He said capital punishment should be replaced with a sentence of life without the possibility of parole.
“I am personally opposed” to capital punishment, Brown said. “It is unfair, it is ineffective and it is costly.”
-- Noelle Crombie
503-276-7184
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