Fascinating fight over death penalty realities and clemency rights gets to Oregon Supreme Court

As reported in this new local article, headlined “Oregon Supreme Court to hear Haugen death penalty case,” this top court in Oregon is due to hear arguments this week in a very interesting case concerning both clemency rights and application of the death penalty. Here are the basics:

The next step in Gary Haugen’s request to be executed is up to the Oregon Supreme Court. When the seven justices hear oral arguments Thursday, they will consider only whether the twice-convicted murderer can legally reject an unconditional reprieve issued by Gov. John Kitzhaber on Nov. 22, 2011. Kitzhaber’s action blocked the execution two weeks before it was scheduled to take place.

Haugen won the first round Aug. 3 in Marion County Circuit Court, where visiting Judge Timothy Alexander ruled that Haugen could refuse the reprieve. The Supreme Court accepted Kitzhaber’s appeal directly.

In written arguments filed with the court, Kitzhaber said Haugen has no legal right to reject a reprieve based on three main reasons: the text of the Oregon Constitution; the historical circumstances of clemency; and previous court decisions about the governor’s clemency powers.

Haugen argued through his lawyer that Kitzhaber’s action was not a true reprieve, previous court decisions support his right to refuse it, and a reprieve deprives him of federal constitutional rights such as a ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

The newspaper account of this upcoming argument provides a brief review of the parties’ arguments, as well as links to some brief. Included therein is a brief with a link to a filing by the ACLU. Upon seeing the link, I was unsure which side the ACLU should and would support, given my understanding that the ACLU opposes the death penalty but also supports a person’s right to die. I will leave it to readers to guess (or figure out) which commitment proved more important to the ACLU in this notable setting.