Oregon Governor Commutes 17 Death Row Inmate Sentences

Oregon Governor Kate Brown has just commuted the death penalty of 17 prisoners on Oregon’s death row. Her decision was announced on December 13 and went into effect the following day, now changing the prisoners’ sentences to life in prison without parole. Governor Brown has deemed the death penalty “both dysfunctional and immoral.”

In 2019 state legislature nearly abolished the death penalty, leaving the state to heavily reevaluate which crimes could be considering worthy of capital punishment. Oregon’s last execution was in 1997. 2011 Governor John Kitzhaber halted executions starting the state’s moratorium on executions. Governor Brown announced she would maintain the moratorium upon her inauguration in 2015. She calls the death penalty “an irreversible punishment that does not allow for correction; is wasteful of taxpayer dollars; does not make communities safer; and cannot be and never has been administered fairly and equitably.”