By Becky Straus, Legislative Director
In what witnesses and media outlets have reported as painfully botched, the failed execution in Oklahoma this week serves as a chilling reminder of the broken machinery of the death penalty in the United States. What happened in Oklahoma this week had the potential to happen in Oregon, were it not for Governor Kitzhaber’s decision in November of 2011 that no death sentence would be carried out in Oregon on his watch.
That’s because Oregon’s laws and regulations allow for a similar “three-drug cocktail” to the one that brought such gruesome results in Oklahoma. And Oregon’s guidelines raise the same kinds of unanswered questions around what specific lethal substances will be injected into the human being to be executed, where the drugs are coming from, if they’ve been tested, and the medical credentials of the person who administers the drugs. Oregon’s vague laws provide no guidance for monitoring the effects on the individual as the drugs are administered, nor do they outline contingency plans should anything go wrong.
Unfortunately the situation in Oklahoma this week was just another in a long list of botched executions that continue to be tolerated in this country.
It is our belief that the death penalty is broken beyond repair and no one can guarantee that it achieves real justice. Sentences of life in prison without the possibility of parole are a better way to keep communities safe without sacrificing our values. The death penalty:
- is and will always be applied in an unfair and unjust manner;
- risks killing innocent people;
- costs millions in taxpayer dollars that could be better spent on solving crimes (life in prison without parole is a severe sentence that costs far less than the death penalty); and
- is not a deterrent.
And, as we are reminded this week, executions can go horribly wrong.
The most powerful indictment of the death penalty comes from Governor Kitzhaber himself at the press conference announcing his decision to issue a moratorium: “The death penalty is morally wrong and unjustly administered… In my mind it is a perversion of justice.”
We are grateful to the governor for taking this principled stand and inviting Oregonians to rethink our commitment to this unfair and unjust system.