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 12 days 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

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.