GARY HAUGEN wants to die.
By August 23, Haugen will have completed 1,573 days on death row and his 30th year in Oregon prison. On that day, he will undergo his second mental competency evaluation—a test to determine whether he mentally qualifies to be killed by the state.
Haugen says he would rather go through with the death penalty than live out his natural life behind bars. While most inmates attempt to push off their execution with appeal after appeal, Haugen has personally waived all right to future appeals and fired his state-appointed attorneys when they fought to stave off the execution day.
“They want me to rot in prison, and my wish is to be executed,” he told Marion County Circuit Judge Jamese Rhoades during a hearing on July 14.
If he succeeds in dying, Haugen will be the first inmate to be put to death in the state in 14 years. His case highlights an unusual issue about the death penalty: Thanks to the eighth amendment of the US Constitution, states cannot apply the death penalty to people who are “mentally incompetent.” But is a man who would rather die than live in prison mentally unsound?
The Eighth Amendment of the US Constitution protects against even sentencing people with an IQ of 70 or below to the death penalty. But mental competence is something different.
“Sanity is a much harder thing to define,” says Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, DC. “You could call me smart and insane.”
To be “mentally competent,” a prisoner must understand what is going on and why he or she is being executed. In Haugen’s case, he understands that he will be executed—but there’s a question of whether he understands the relationship between his execution and the crime for which he was sent to death row: his 2003 murder of fellow inmate David Polin.
To further confuse matters, Dieter explains there is often a correlation between mental illness and mental incompetence: “You could be incompetent now, you could be treated with medication and therapy and then you could be executed,” he says.
Haugen already had one mental competency evaluation (with noted neuropsychologist Muriel Lezak), but her assessment was stricken from the record when Haugen fired his state-appointed attorneys, Andy Simrin and Keith Goody, this summer. That change also pushed back the date of Haugen’s execution from July 28 to August 16, and now his death date hinges on the results of the mental competency hearing. Even after he fired them, Haugen’s attorneys continued to argue that he is not mentally competent to undergo an execution.
Simrin and Goody wrote in a writ of mandamus that Haugen was delusional and unfit to be executed. The psychologist agreed.
“While Mr. Haugen has factual awareness of the crime he was convicted of and his impending execution and the state’s reason for executing him, it is my opinion that Mr. Haugen suffers from a mental condition that prevents him from comprehending the reasons for his death sentence or its implication,” wrote Lezak.
The high cost of maintaining death row and the hurdles to actually executing prisoners—even in the very unusual case that they clear the legal path to their death—raise the question of whether the state should even have the death penalty.
Since reinstating the death penalty in 1984, Oregon has only gone through with two executions. Both those inmates, like Haugen, waived their rights to further appeals. The appeals process for the 37 inmates currently on Oregon’s death row is 10 steps long and can take as many as 20 years to complete.
“I don’t think we, as a state, have a stomach for lots of executions,” says Bill Long, author of A Tortured History: The Story of Capital Punishment in Oregon. “My read of Oregon’s character is that Oregon likes the death penalty, but it doesn’t like the notion of actually putting people to death.”
“Death row is a more expensive place to keep a person,” says Dieter. “The typical death row is single cell, but regular prison is two or more in a cell. Meals are brought to you, if you have a visitor two guards will be shackled to you. Everything takes more people power.”
Currently, there are 16 states without the death penalty. Oregon has abolished and reinstated the death penalty twice in its history. Long thinks we’re poised to abolish it again, pointing to statistics showing that when there are 10 or more states without the death penalty, Oregon usually follows suit.
I’m a BIG porponent for the death penalty!
That said, i feel that the U.S. should abolish it on both state and federal levels. Just like most other [apparently] civilized nations. It’s pretty damned clear that WE are totally incapible of administering it in anywhere NEAR a fair manner.
All but 16 states have it, but noone really wants to use it, for the most part. The fact that OR has killed just two people since 1984 is indicative of this, because the same goes for many other states – even many Southern ones. Only Texas seems to kill someone every other year.
Also, why the death penatly should be abolished:
1. It’s odd that a mother who murders her five small children (in TX of all places!) would get life, some guy in another state murders his wife and gets life, a woman in yet another state murders her daugther and gets NOTHING, religious parents in yet another state murder their daughter and the dad gets six monthes, but a guy in a different state allegedly kills a cop and gets sentenced to death. This seems extremely uneven.
2. And let’s be real, only people of color and very poor whites are even eligible for this sentence.
3. Many imates will sit on death row for as much as 30 years, which is something of a life sentence anyways. The fact that ALL death sentences go to automatic appeal and that we allow the process to stretch out for decades again shows our extreme aprehension to using it.
4. Many imates sitting on death row now were put there by questionable evidence and sheer prejudice. Mumia Abu Jumal is only the most famous example of this, but he’s by no means alone in this fact, or even that rare.
5. The only goddamned reason we still even cling on to a death penalty is b/c of the really, most fucked up cases, i suppose. But even that can’t really be true because MOST of the worst murderers get life sentences. Gary Ridgeway (Green river killer) got life and probably killed 3 times as many women as Ted Bundy, who was executed. Both men oporated in pretty much the same area (NW), so why the disparity?
If Gary Haugen WANTS to die, then fine. Let it happen next week. He’s ALREADY ON DEATH ROW, so i don’t understand what the fuss is. If OR is nervous about executing a guy that the state sentenced, whom he himself insists on WANTING to die, then we should just abolish! Those 37 people sitting on OR’s death row now – are they all really that much worse than Korena Elaine Roberts? That woman only got life!
For god’s sake, if the man wants to die, let him die. Isn’t that some kind of basic human right?
It IS, actually.
Fuck that shit….
To my way of thinking, I would want to die too, rather than face the remainder of my life in prison. He thinks that too. Let him rot in prison and think about how he got there for the rest of his life.
Also, the Death Sentance, with all the built in appeals and such, costs more to administer than life in prison.
And sometimes they finger the wrong person for a crime.
The Death Penalty – really the Shortened Life Penalty since we all die – should be abolished.
Right, considering that imates sit on death row an average of 20 years, is there really even a Hell of a difference b/t that and a life sentance? Gonna die in prison, anyways. It’s really just a matter of 20 years, 40 years, 50, 60…
Like i said, either use it and use it RIGHT, or not at all.
Have you ever been to jail? If one has any intelligence at all it is torture. Some just shut down completely, some act out some are so medicated they don’t/can’t care. This poor soul has probably been driven mad by being in a place with incompetents, schizophrenics and just plain old dumb people. He killed his girlfriend out of Jealousy and is a passionate man isn’t he? Go ahead F–ker you want to die be my guest. Obviously he’s not getting out and if he stays he’ll probably kill again and again.