June 20, 2013 - The Oregon Supreme Court issued a unanimous opinion confirming the Governor’s broad constitutional powers to grant reprieves, commutations or pardons for all offenses (excepting acts of treason) and stated that Governor Kitzhaber’s reprieve of Gary Haugen’s death sentence is valid. The ACLU Foundation of Oregon had filed a “friend of the court” brief urging the state Supreme Court to recognize the Governor’s constitutional authority to grant a temporary reprieve of a death sentence.
In November 2011, Governor John Kitzhaber issued just such a reprieve to death row inmate Gary Haugen who had waived his remaining appeals of his death sentence. A death warrant was issued and an execution date was set for Haugen. In stopping the execution, Kitzhaber stated his belief that Oregon’s system of capital punishment is one that is broken and flawed and that as long as he was governor he would not allow this execution to occur. The Supreme Court recognized that the Governor’s action was not a private act of grace from an individual happening to possess power, but rather part of the Constitutional scheme that permits the chief executive to act in service of the public welfare.
Haugen sued the Governor claiming the reprieve was invalid unless the recipient accepted the reprieve; something Haugen had refused to do. The Supreme Court stated that the state constitution is very clear in granting broad commutation powers to the governor yet is silent on any requirement that the intended recipient of a commutation must accept the offer for it to be valid. Today’s ruling upheld this important part of our Constitutional system of checks and balances
ACLU cooperating attorneys on this case were Bruce Campbell, Elisa Dozono, and Alex Naito of Miller Nash LLP. Also on the brief were Jeffrey Ellis of the Oregon Capital Resource Center and Erin McKee of the Oregon Justice Resource Center.