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Michael McDonnell killed Joey Keever with a knife in Douglas County in 1984. It

was not a pretty thing to see, but as murders go it was run-of-the-mill. Only one person

died and there was no premeditation or obvious motive. Mr. McDonnell was a hitch

hiker, having walked away from a local correctional facility work camp where he was

serving a short sentence for Driving Under the Influence. Technically an escape, this

opened him to a charge of aggravated murder which carried the death penalty since 12days before the murder.

In our law, the death penalty is reserved to the worst of the worst:

"Death is truly an awesome punishment. The calculated killing of a human being

by the State involves, by its very nature, a denial of the executed person's

humanity. The contrast with the plight of a person punished by imprisonment is

evident. An individual in prison does not lose `the right to have rights.' A prisoner

retains, for example, the constitutional rights to the free exercise of religion, to be

free of cruel and unusual punishments, and to treatment as a `person' for purposes

of due process of law and the equal protection of the laws. A prisoner remains a

member of the human family. Moreover, he retains the right of access to the

courts. His punishment is not irrevocable. Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238, 290

(1972) (BRENNAN, J., concurring).

A trial judge decided, in 1987, that the charge was not proportional to the crime,

and the state appealed to the Court of Appeals which reversed. The state Supreme Court

upheld the Court of Appeals, so the case came back to Douglas County for trial. What

followed was a 25-year saga of attempted, official homicide. The key players were the

county prosecutor obsessed with McDonnells death, a sympathetic Supreme Court

seemingly willing to undertake any sophistry or corruption of the law to assist in killing

Mr. McDonnell and a series of state court trial judges who missed virtually no

opportunity to circumvent their duties as trial judges in order that Mr. McDonnell be put

to death.

Death penalty convictions are automatically reviewed by the state Supreme Court

and they get close attention from the U.S. Supreme Court, which always scrutinizes such

convictions carefully, and in its bloodlust Douglas County simply could not get it right,

because the state Supreme Court sent it back 3 times. That was not due to the Courts

concern that Mr. McDonnells rights be scrupulously honored; the Oregon Supreme Court

knew from experience that the U.S. Supreme Court was breathing down its neck and

watching carefully.

The Oregon Supreme Courts lack of concern for Mr. McDonnells rights morphed

into a complete lack of concern for any law that might be used to benefit him. When the

Court decided to send the case back for a new penalty phase - there are two parts to a

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death penalty case - it was faced with a statute that said that the penalty must be decided

by the same jury that decided guilt or innocence, the Oregon Supreme Court just said No,

thats too inconvenient. When confronted with the fact that the death penalty statute

under which Mr. McDonnell was tried and sentenced was unconstitutional on its face

according to the Oregon Supreme Courts own interpretation, the Court simply reversed

itself and reinterpreted the statute as constitutional.

These were acts of extraordinary judicial dishonesty, all undertaken to assure that a

man was put to death regardless of whether he or the crime fit the established criteria.

Mr. McDonnell is still alive today, and he faces years of litigation before the state

may even think of putting him to death. Mr. McDonnell was prepared at his arraignment

in 1984 to plead guilty to murder and be sentenced to life without parole. He has lived on

death row for nearly 30 years instead, and the state has spent, literally, millions of dollars

(if not tens of millions) trying to put him to death.

Mike McDonnell is still alive, but the prosecutor who so vigorously sought his

extinction is not - he died a few years ago, and left us a legacy of shame, dereliction of

duty and vengefulness for which Oregon taxpayers will foot the bill for decades yet to

come.