Death penalty

Oregon’s death penalty

Despite a moratorium on executions that has been in place since 2011, Oregon retains the death penalty. Our state has a long history of capital punishment, although Oregonians changed their minds several times over the course of the twentieth century, adopting and then striking down the death penalty more than once.

Key dates

1984 Voters restored the death penalty as a penalty for aggravated murder.
1996 Douglas Franklin Wright was executed by lethal injection at the Oregon State Penitentiary.
1997 Harry Charles Moore was executed by lethal injection at the Oregon State Penitentiary.
2011 Governor John Kitzhaber announced that he would not sign execution warrants, beginning a moratorium that has continued under his successors, Governor Kate Brown and Governor Tina Kotek.
2016 We funded a study written by academics from Lewis & Clark Law School and Seattle University that found Oregon death sentences cost up to a million dollars more than life sentences in comparable cases. A report found two-thirds of people on death row had significant mental impairments including mental illness, intellectual impairment, childhood trauma, and/or were under 21 when they committed their crimes.
2019 Senate Bill 1013 became law, substantially limiting crimes to which the death penalty applies.
2020 The Oregon Department of Corrections announced that it would close death row and relocate most people under a death sentence into the general population of its prisons. The only woman on death row - Angela McAnulty - was resentenced to life in prison.
2022 Governor Brown commuted the sentences of the 17 people under a death sentence in Oregon to life without parole.
2023 Our former client Jesse Johnson’s was released from jail after 25 years’ incarceration, including 17 under a death sentence. The Oregon Court of Appeals overturned his conviction in 2021. Mr. Johnson is the first Oregon death row exoneree.

Why we oppose the death penalty

No state or federal capital punishment system has ever been completely free of error. That means every jurisdiction that permits executions is risking the killing of an innocent person for a crime they did not commit. Across the country, there are now more than 180 people who have been sentenced to death and have later been exonerated. No one has yet been exonerated from death row in Oregon, but the same problems that plague the death penalty elsewhere exist here. There is no certain way to prevent any innocent person ever ending up on death row.

In 2016, we funded a cost study written by academics from Lewis & Clark Law School and Seattle University. It examined the cost of death sentences in Oregon and compared them to life sentences for similar crimes. That study found that death sentences cost up to a million dollars more in legal fees alone. The death penalty diverts resources, time, and skills that could be used to build healthier communities.

The death penalty is supposed by many of its supporters to be the ultimate punishment for the worst crimes. But there is little oversight of who receives a death sentence and who does not, even when cases are similar. Factors such as the race of the perpetrator and the victim, the location of the crime, and the quality of the legal representation available have an outsize impact on who is sentenced to death and who receives a life sentence. Many people under death sentences in Oregon have one or more issues such as intellectual disability, serious mental illness, severe childhood trauma, or were barely adults when they committed their crimes.

The death penalty makes a false promise to victims’ families that they will achieve “closure” by seeing the perpetrator sentenced to death and eventually executed. In fact, all those who receive a death sentence in Oregon go through a lengthy but necessary appeals process. Conviction and sentence reversals mean some people go through the legal process more than once. Only two people have been executed in Oregon since Kennedy was president; people on death row are far more likely to die in prison than be executed.

Correctional officers and people working in the justice and political systems are all part of the “machinery of death” in Oregon. Former Superintendent of Oregon State Penitentiary Frank Thompson, who had to plan, train for, and supervise the two executions in Oregon in the 1990s has spoken publicly about the psychological harm this causes to staff. We hosted him as a speaker at “Death Row from Both Sides,” an event we organized in 2016 in Portland where he spoke along with Texas death row survivor and exoneree Anthony Graves.

Our anti-death penalty work

We are working to reduce, limit, and discourage new death sentences in Oregon, to prevent the resumption of executions, and ultimately to end the death penalty. We do this by several means, including political advocacy, communications, public education initiatives, and collaboration with like-minded organizations locally and nationally. In the past few years, we have funded a comprehensive cost study that examines how much Oregonians are paying for the death penalty, hosted speakers and spoken at events to educate Oregonians about the death penalty, supported legislation (Senate Bill 1013) to drastically limit the use of the death penalty in Oregon, and advocated for the commutation of all Oregon death sentences. We are continuing to work toward the goal of repeal. Sign up for our newsletter to keep in touch with our efforts to end the death penalty in Oregon.