Ore. governor bans death penalty for rest of term

SALEM, Ore. (AP) — Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber on Tuesday imposed a moratorium on the death penalty for the remainder of his term, saying he's morally opposed to capital punishment and has long regretted allowing two men to be executed in the 1990s.

Kitzhaber's decision gives a temporary reprieve to a twice-convicted murderer who was scheduled to die by lethal injection in two weeks, along with 36 others on death row. It makes Oregon the fifth state to halt executions since 2007.

Agenda 21, ObamaCare, Liberal sh*tball Greenie...

On January 13, 2006, Kitzhaber launched the Archimedes Movement, an organization seeking to maximize the health of the population by creating a sustainable system which uses the public resources spent on health care to ensure that everyone has access to a defined set of effective health services. The goal is to create a vision for a more equitable and sustainable system as well as the political tension necessary for its realization. A legislative proposal that took input from many Oregon residents was introduced in the 2007 Oregon legislative session.[17]

The Oregon Better Health Act failed to pass the 2007 Legislature after Kitzhaber was unable to overcome concerns raised by AARP about his inclusion of Medicare in his plan.[18] Another health reform bill, a Senate proposal which was amended to include portions of the Archimedes Movement bill, passed instead.[19]

With the withdrawal of Tom Daschle’s candidacy for United States Secretary of Health and Human Services, there was speculation Kitzhaber could be tapped for the position.[20][21] However, Kitzhaber denied interest in the position and said that he was not being vetted.[22]

In 1981 Gary Haugen received life in prison for beating to death his ex-girlfriend’s mother, Mary Archer. After 22 years of indolence and basic comfort at taxpayer expense, in 2003 he bludgeoned and stabbed to death a fellow inmate, and incurred the death penalty.

Now Governor Kitzhaber thwarts a predictably lethargic criminal justice system to grant Mr. Haugen about thirty additional years to murder again. Kitzhaber’s profound personal conviction finds the death penalty morally wrong and unjustly administered, and he does not believe executions make us safer or nobler as a society.

Kitzhaber expresses morality sourced in human reasoning, but one can expect liberal Christian churches to align with him. Their Christian identity means finding affirmation within the larger social and academic humanistic culture. They backwards engineer selected scriptures through cherished homilies to arrive at preordained points of departure such as the Governor’s.

The death penalty issue reminds me of this Catholic nun holding a sign saying “Thou shalt not kill”. Here was an example of someone for whom embracing a morality fabricated by human intellect prevented objective study of her tradecraft. She treasured acceptance within the larger social and academic humanistic community by allowing others to write her definitions and set her agendas.

Quoting “Thou shalt not kill” simply does not work. There are two Greek words: the ordinary word to kill and the word to murder. The scriptures use the word for murder one in Gospel accounts in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. To examine the Old Testament one can complete a fairly thorough analysis just by reviewing Strong’s Concordance. The commandment “Thou shalt not kill” uses the word ratsach, which by my count appears 33 times in the Old Testament, and always refers to what our civil courts would interpret as committing first and second degree murder. I find two others words for kill and slay, muwth and harag, and three for destroy, shamad, shachath, and charam. These appear over 230 times and encompass all accounts for application of justice and conduct of warfare.

I contrast her with the position of C. S. Lewis, who experienced two world wars and a depression during his distinguished academic career. In terms of pure intelligence few surpassed him. After serving in the trenches during WW I, Lewis entered Oxford as an undergraduate student, where he won a triple first; the highest honors in three areas of study. Such was the beginning of an outstanding career. As a Christian few have surpassed him for accurately tempering a superior intellect with the wondrous mystery of the Lord’s existence as absolute righteousness and absolute love resulting in perfect justice.

The quote I remember comes from Mere Christianity and says,

“Does loving your enemy mean not punishing him? No, for loving myself does not mean that I ought not to subject myself to punishment – even to death. If one has committed a murder, the right Christian thing to do would be to give yourself up to the bench and be hanged. It is, therefore, in my opinion, perfectly right for a Christian judge to sentence a man to death or a Christian solder to kill an enemy.……We may kill if necessary, but we must not hate or enjoy it.”

Kitzhaber expresses a moral position exclusively sourced in human reasoning detached from the law imposing a proportional judgment. The liberal Christian churches will align with him, because their definition of Christianity means finding areas of compatibility with the missions of organizations they value. In their world success comes from achieving a steady state by jumbling together acceptable Christian traditions with human philosophical traditions.

When faced with the liberal church represented by individuals such as the nun who possesses a fledging intellect and life experiences as one dimensional as her sign, I would always choose to take my council from people like C. S. Lewis. Lewis expressed a durable morality earned in the ultimate bloody deluges and the great economic tragedy of the 20th century.

For the guilty, I agree. It is merciful, and just imo. I have little faith in the process that leads to such severe decisions. Different topic.

I agree. Some here know I have become opposed to the death penalty because it is proved there have been, and likely will always be, many people found guilty who are in truth not.

Oregon's "aggravated murder" statute reserves capital punishment for the most serious of crimes, but does little to address the quality of evidence presented at trial - though I'm not sure any evidence could be sufficiently perfect.

Boots and Proctor. Accused and convicted of a 1983 convenience store robbery/slaying, and among the "poster children" for Oregon's 1984 capital punishment reinstatement campaign, didn't do it.

Recall if you will. Eight years hence they got out of prison after the real killer came to conclude his own life in a bizarre suicide, leaving behind an opus which proved his guilt.

Try bringing any sort of justice to the wrongly convicted if they are already dead as a result of that conviction.

George Ryan did the right thing in Illinois (in my opinion), and I would grudgingly praise Kitz were he to the same thing and commute all the sentences, rather than just kick the can down the road.

That said, I still wouldn't vote for Kitz if he were running for dogcatcher.

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