October 23, 2013: Edwin J. Peterson, who served as the Chief Justice of Oregon's Supreme Court for many years, recently recommended ending the “Dickensonian system we have in Oregon”.
Judge Peterson voted as a citizen to reinstate the death penalty in Oregon in 1978 and in 1984, but he now believes the capital punishment system is broken: "We have an inefficient, ineffective, dysfunctional system," he said. "There is widespread dissatisfaction.... Our system has failed. Recognize it and repeal Oregon’s death penalty."
He noted that taxpayers are supporting a system that yields no results: “Under current law, an Oregon defendant sentenced to death has no fewer than nine separate appeals. The reversal rate is high. Not one of the 37 persons on Death Row has yet exhausted his appeal rights! There is little reason to believe that any defendant now on Oregon’s Death Row will ever be executed. We taxpayers pay nearly all of the expenses of prosecuting and defending death-penalty cases.
A New Jersey Death Penalty Study Commission concluded that the state would save $1.3 million per prisoner in incarceration costs if the death penalty were abolished and a life-without-possibility-of-parole system implemented. Might not the money be better spent on better things?"
Source: Oregonian, October 23, 2013
