Oregon Gov. Kate Brown commutes sentences of all 17 people on death row

PORTLAND, Ore. -- Gov. Kate Brown announced Tuesday that she would commute the sentences of all 17 individuals on Oregon’s death row to life in prison without the possibility of parole, the latest in her end-of-term string of clemency decisions.

“I have long believed that justice is not advanced by taking a life, and the state should not be in the business of executing people — even if a terrible crime placed them in prison,” Brown said in a statement sent out in a press release. “This is a value that many Oregonians share.”

The governor also directed the Department of Corrections to dismantle the state’s death chamber.

Oregon has not executed anyone on death row for a quarter century and Brown continued the moratorium that former Gov. John Kitzhaber put in place in 2011. Governor-elect Tina Kotek, who like Brown and Kitzhaber is a Democrat, is personally opposed to the death penalty based on her religious beliefs and said during the campaign that she would continue the moratorium.

Voters have gone back and forth on the death penalty over the years, abolishing and reinstating it repeatedly. Voters’ most recent decision on the death penalty was in 1984, when they inserted it into the state Constitution.

Oregon is one of 27 states that authorize the death penalty, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

One of those death row inmates is Randy Lee Guzek, who was convicted in 1988 and sentenced to death for killing Rod and Lois Houser, of Terrebonne. Sue Shirley, the Housers’ daughter, said Tuesday she was aware of the governor’s decision to commute Guzek’s sentence, but had not heard from the state directly.

“I’m horrified and outraged and I don’t know what this means,” Shirley said Tuesday. “Will true life be true life?”

Shirley noted that Guzek has been resentenced four times over the past 24 years as the Legislature has changed rules, though his death penalty sentence has been repeatedly upheld.

“All I know is that we never get to have a say,” she said Tuesday. “Forty-eight jurors have said the just sentence was the death penalty, but that’s been a moving target. The Legislature has changed the rules time and time again and it’s just been a nightmare.”

In 2019, the Legislature passed a bill that limited the crimes that qualified for the death penalty by narrowing the definition of aggravated murder to killing two or more people as an act of organized terrorism; intentionally and with premeditation kilIing a child younger than 14; killing another person while locked up in jail or prison for a previous murder; or killing a police, correctional or probation officer.

More than two years have passed since the Brown administration dismantled Oregon’s death row, a move that acknowledged the effective end of capital punishment in the state.

Brown said in her statement Tuesday that commuting the sentences of people currently serving on Oregon’s death row was consistent with what she described as lawmakers’ “near abolition” of capital punishment.

“Unlike previous commutations I’ve granted to individuals who have demonstrated extraordinary growth and rehabilitation, this commutation is not based on any rehabilitative efforts by the individuals on death row,” Brown said. “Instead, it reflects the recognition that the death penalty is immoral. It is 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.”

Twelve of the seventeen people on death row are white, three are Latino, one is American Indian or Alaska Native and one is Black, according to the governor’s office.

Brown’s order will take effect on Wednesday.

Rosemary Brewer, executive director of the Oregon Crime Victims Law Center, said it was her understanding that Oregon Department of Justice Crime Victim and Survivor Services Division staff worked Tuesday to notify family members and had reached all of the families affected by the commutations. A spokesperson for the governor confirmed that DOJ handled notification. However, Brewer said the governor should have given families more advance notice of her decision.

“The victims should have been told about this so they had some time to prepare for it,” Brewer said. “These are horrific cases that left completely devastated families. They’re preparing for the holidays and all of a sudden, they see in the (newspaper) that the person who traumatized — devastated — their families had their death sentence commuted.”

Among the convicts whose sentences Brown commuted is Jesse Caleb Compton, a Springfield man who was convicted of killing his live-in girlfriend’s 3-year-old daughter in the late 1990s. The girl’s body showed evidence of horrific abuse and prosecutors called it the worst case of child abuse they had ever seen. Patty Perlow, the Lane County district attorney who prosecuted Compton, said that as heinous as the killing was, it no longer qualified for a death sentence under the definition of aggravated murder the Legislature passed in 2019.

“When the legislature passed that bill, it did not include torture of a child in the definition of aggravated murder, only the pre-meditated murder of a child,” she said. “The charge wasn’t pled that way.”

One of Compton’s appeals for post conviction relief went to trial in 2012, where his lawyers argued that his original defense counsel was inadequate. The justice department prevailed and Compton’s conviction and sentence were upheld. But Compton’s appeal of that decision languished for years, Perlow said, and the Court of Appeals didn’t hear arguments on it until earlier this year.

If the court sides with the state, Compton is likely to appeal. If Compton prevails, the case will be sent back to Lane County for retrial. Perlow said it’s unclear what impact the governor’s commutation would have on his new prosecution.

Advocates including the Oregon Justice Resource Center pushed for the governor to commute all death row sentences for years. On Tuesday, the center’s executive director Bobbin Singh said in a statement that Brown “has made the right choice for Oregon in commuting these death sentences and dismantling the death chamber.”

Capital punishment “risks executing innocent people and Oregon is not immune to the causes of wrongful conviction seen around the country,” Singh said. He pointed to the case of Jesse Johnson, a client of the center, whose conviction and death sentence for the 1998 stabbing of a Salem woman were overturned last year by the Oregon Court of Appeals, which ruled his defense team had failed to interview a witness who saw another man enter the victim’s house.

“Research has demonstrated that the death penalty is tremendously wasteful of resources, does not keep our communities safer, and provides the fiction of closure as death penalty cases drags families through the courts for decades,” Singh said.

Brown’s clemency actions, which included early release for people deemed at risk of serious health impacts from COVID-19 and inmates who helped fight Oregon’s catastrophic 2020 wildfires, have freed roughly 1,000 people from state prisons.

The Oregonian/OregonLive asked Brown’s spokespeople on Friday for the total number of people for whom the governor had issued pardons and commuted sentences. On Tuesday, press secretary Liz Merah responded that the governor has commuted the sentences of a total of 1,189 incarcerated people.

The governor also pardoned approximately 45,000 people this year for their marijuana possession convictions, although that did not result in anyone being freed from prison because no one in Oregon was incarcerated for simple possession of an ounce or less of marijuana. And she issued 77 other pardons for crimes that the governor’s office did not identify.

Oregon Senate Republican Leader Tim Knopp, R- Bend, released a statement late Tuesday asking whether the people of Oregon had voted to end the death penalty.

“I don’t recall that happening,” he said. “This is another example of the Governor and the Democrats not abiding by the wishes of Oregonians. Even in the final days of her term, Brown continues to disrespect victims of the most violent crimes.”

Christian Michael Longo was convicted in the December 2001 murders of his wife, Mary Jane Longo, and their three children on the Oregon coast. Longo was sentenced to death in 2003.

James Baker, Mary Jane Longo’s father, said Tuesday that his family feels that justice has not been served.

“As far as the family is concerned, this is wrong and wrong,” Baker said. “The rest of us all have to live the rest of our lives knowing what he did. … He killed his family, which is my daughter and my grandchildren, and they will never see life again.”

Baker said the governor’s decision comes uncomfortably close to the anniversary of the killings.

“Every single year we can’t forget and every time Christmas rolls around, what we think about this,” he said. “We have our scrapbooks and our pictures and we go through them around this time and realize these people are gone, and they are gone forever.”

Baker said he also worries that Longo’s commuted sentence will give him a chance to appeal for parole and eventually, a chance to get out. He said he worries for his family’s safety if Longo, now 48, were to ever get out of prison.

Among the defendants who were sentenced to death but saw their sentences commuted Tuesday were the father and son team of Bruce and Joshua Turnidge. They were convicted of the aggravated murders of Oregon State Police Senior Trooper Bill Hakim and Woodburn Police Capt. Tom Tennant, when a bomb that the Turnidges built exploded inside a Woodburn bank on Dec. 12, 2008. The Turnidges also were convicted for injuries to Woodburn Police Chief Scott Russell, who survived but lost a leg and endured dozens of surgeries.

Marion County District Attorney Paige Clarkson criticized the governor for wiping away death sentences, especially given the anniversary of the bank bombing a day earlier.

“While I am not surprised at the Governor’s disregard for victims in this way, I grieve for the loss of these courageous men and for the dearth of Oregon leadership that is disrespecting their memories,” Clarkson said in a statement.

One of Clarkson’s deputy district attorneys, Matt Kemmy, said he’s prosecuted five murderers who initially were dealt death penalty sentences by juries. Three of those sentences stood until Tuesday – that of the Turnidges and Robert Langley, who killed two people in separate attacks in 1988. The body of one of Langely’s victims was found under a cactus garden on the grounds of the Oregon State Hospital, where Langley had been receiving mental health treatment. At his original trial and in appeals, five separate juries voted to sentence Langley to death, Kemmy said.

“I will never understand why people like Gov. Brown would rather be a hero to murderers than to be a protector of victims,” Kemmy said.

Wiping away death sentences is hurting many family members of those who were murdered, he said. Kemmy said his job is to enforce the law and if Oregon voters wanted to eliminate the death penalty, they would have.

Bill Hakim’s widow, Terri Hakim, said the governor’s commutations are “devastating” and feel like an “early Christmas present” to the convicted and their families.

“OK, let’s just make it harder for the victims to go through their days, knowing that our governor is looking out for them and not us,” Terri Hakim said. “It’s a very personal slap in the face.”

Hakim sarcastically joked that at least the governor waited until the day after the 14th anniversary of the bombing to make her announcement. She said since the Turnidges were sentenced to death in 2010, any solace she felt has eroded again and again as two governors placed moratoriums on executions; the Legislature made it exceptionally difficult for defendants who kill to be sentenced to death; and the Turnidges appealed their convictions. Their latest attempt was heard just last month during a post-conviction relief trial.

Terri Hakim said she never thought the Turnidges actually would be executed.

“I liked the fact that they would be isolated by themselves,” she said. “I liked the fact that they didn’t have privileges in the general population.”

Hakim’s adult daughter, Page Hakim, feels differently than her mother. She doesn’t oppose the governor’s decision, although she wishes the governor’s office had put more time between informing families and making it public. She said she was at work and hadn’t had a chance to open an email sent from the state Tuesday afternoon until after the governor had already made her announcement and a member of the news media had reached out to her.

But Page Hakim supports the governor’s decision, because she doesn’t support the death penalty.

“I have no kind thoughts for the murderers of my father,” she said. “I do not believe they ever deserve freedom.”

But, she added, “the justice is making them live with their crime. And to know that that crime will never allow them freedom again.”

Here is the list of people whose death sentences will be commuted on Wednesday:

• Jesse Caleb Compton, a Springfield methamphetamine user who was convicted of killing Tesslyn O’Cull, the 3-year-old daughter of his live-in girlfriend. The girl’s body, found in a shallow grave in 1997, showed signs of being bound, shocked and sexually assaulted and prosecutors called it the worst case of child abuse they had ever seen.
• Clinton Wendess Cunningham, an Oklahoma resident who was convicted of raping and murdering 19-year-old Shannon Faith of Vancouver, B.C., in 1991 after he picked her up hitchhiking near Coos Bay. Cunningham stabbing Faith 37 times, then dumped her partially-clothed body by the side of a logging road near Elkton.
• Randy Lee Guzek was sentenced to death in 1988 after he was convicted of killing Rod and Lois Houser, of Terrebonne. Guzek, who was 18, shot Lois Houser three times with a handgun, chased her up a staircase and shot her for the last time as she huddled inside a closet. Two other men were also convicted of participating in the murders.
• Gary Dwayne Haugen was convicted of aggravated murder in 1981 for killing the mother of his ex-girlfriend at her Northeast Portland home. He beat the woman to death with his fists, a hammer and a baseball bat and was sentenced to life in prison. Then in 2007 Haugen, along with fellow inmate Jason Van Brumwell, was convicted in the 2003 killing of fellow prison inmate David Shane Polin, 31, in the activities area at the Salem prison.
• Michael James Hayward and three companions were convicted of killing a convenience store clerk and severely beating another in 1994. Frances Walls died after a metal bar went through her skull; Donna Ream survived despite being hit more than 50 times with a metal bar and losing nearly half her blood.
• Robert Paul Langley Jr. was convicted of killing and burying Anne Louise Gray, 39, and Larry Richard Rockenbrant, 24, in separate incidents in 1988.
• Christian Michael Longo was convicted of killing his wife and three children on the Oregon Coast. Their bodies were recovered from two coastal inlets around Christmas 2001. Longo went on the lam and was eventually captured in Mexico posing as a travel writer.
• Ernest Noland Lotches was convicted of killing William G. Hall, 33, a downtown Portland security guard during a running gun battled that terrified Saturday shoppers in August 1992. Hall, a security guard for the downtown Economic Improvement District, had tried to question Lotches about a minor assault. Lotches fled, and the two exchanged gunfire. Hall died after pulling a 9-year-old child out of the line of fire as Lotches was trying to commandeer a car.
• Michael Martin McDonnell had been serving a sentence for perjury and theft when he walked away from the Oregon State Penitentiary on Nov. 21, 1984. While an escapee, McDonnell stabbed Joey B. Keever, 22, of Roseburg, 42 times in her pickup truck near Yoncalla on Dec. 22, 1984. Keever’s throat was cut and she was dumped near U.S. 99. McDonnell was the second man charged with capital murder after voters re-instated the death penalty in November 1984.
• Marco Antonio Montez and Timothy Aikens beat, raped and sodomized Candace Straub in a Portland motel room in 1987. They then strangled her with a bed sheet and set her body on fire. Montez was later arrested in Idaho. Aikens is serving a life sentence.
• Horacio Alberto Reyes-Camarena stabbed Maria Zetina and her sister, Angelica Zetina, and dumped their bodies along U.S. 101. Despite 17 stab wounds, Angelica Zetina survived and identified Reyes-Camarena as her attacker. On appeal to the Oregon Supreme Court, his attorneys argued that his statements to police should have been suppressed because he was not informed of his right to speak with his consulate. He is a Mexican citizen and was the only foreign national on Oregon’s Death Row.
• Ricardo Pineda Serrano was convicted for the 2006 shooting of Melody Dang, 37, and her sons Steven, 15, and Jimmy, 12. Prosecutors said Serrano was seeking revenge against Mike Nguyen, Dang’s partner. Nguyen had an affair with Serrano’s wife, Melinda, and got her pregnant. Melinda Serrano testified in court that her husband beat her, raped her and left her so terrified that she was unable to take their five children and leave him. She filed for divorce in 2011.
• Matthew Dwight Thompson was convicted of murdering Andrew J. McDonald and Paul Whitcher. Thompson stabbed McDonald 14 times after returning to a Portland tavern he’d been kicked out of. He also stabbed McDonald’s wife, Deborah Oyamada, and another tavern patron. McDonald died on the way to the hospital. Later that night, Thompson stabbed Whitcher, who was found dead in the intersection of Northeast 61st Avenue and Sacramento Street.
• Bruce Aldon Turnidge and his son, Joshua Abraham Turnidge, were found guilty of all charges in the Dec. 12, 2008, bombing at West Coast Bank in Woodburn. The explosion killed two police officers, Woodburn police Capt. Tom Tennant and Oregon State Police senior trooper William Hakim. Another officer lost his leg and a bank employee was injured when police tried to dismantle the bomb.
• Joshua Abraham Turnidge testified in his own defense, suggesting his father acted alone. During the trial, Turnidge showed no signs of emotion until the day the court listened to a recording to a phone call he had with his daughter while in custody.
• Mike Spenser Washington Jr. shot witness Mohamed Jabbie seven times after he testified against Washington before a Multnomah County grand jury on Sept. 23, 2004. Jabbie had testified that Washington assaulted him after he’d begun dating Washington’s long-time girlfriend.
• Tara Ellyssia Zyst (also known as Karl Terry) was convicted for hacking Jeffrey and Dale Brown to death with an 18-inch long Japanese sword as they slept on Aug. 6, 1994. The three were camping in a Milwaukie park next to the Willamette River in celebration of Dale Brown’s birthday.

Oregonian staffers Ted Sickinger, Aimee Green and Kristine de Leon contributed to this report.