Inmates who have won clemency will spend the rest of their days in jail
In his last days in government, Donald Trump pardoned some of his partners, such as Roger Stone or Steve Bannon. Barack Obama, to transgender soldier Chelsea Manning, so troubled by the conviction that it stemmed from leaks of her to Wikileaks that she attempted suicide at least three times in prison. George W. Bush, fourteen senior officials of the Reagan Executive and his father who participated in the plot with Iran to finance the Nicaraguan contras.
Instead, in her last days as Governor of Oregon, Kate Brown announced yesterday that the death sentences of seventeen individuals awaiting execution on death row would be exchanged to life in prison. Thanks to this gesture they will spend the rest of their days in prison but they will not have to worry about their last dinner.
“I have always thought that taking another life was not the way to do justice,” said the governor, explaining her controversial decision. “The death penalty is dysfunctional and immoral. It has never been fairly administered in Oregon, in fact it has been quite arbitrary, and that is not how the criminal justice system should work.”
In the skin of the victims
They were not the most benign cases, nor has it been easy to explain it to the families of the victims. Among them are those of Mary Jame and her three children, murdered by her husband Christian Longo. Those of the three-year-old girl who in 1997 murdered Tessylnn O’Cull or those of the policemen who died in the bomb attack perpetrated by Bruce Turnidge and his son Joshua, whose lives she has also personified.
“I have no way of putting myself in the shoes of these victims,” the governor replied when asked. “What they have been through is terrible and frightful, my heart aches just thinking about it, but at the same time I think it is immoral that the government is also dedicated to executing people,” she resolved.
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