PORTLAND, Ore. – Clinton Cunningham, who was sentenced to death following the rape and murder of a hitchhiker, has become Oregon’s first death-row inmate to complete the state appeals process since voters reinstated capital punishment in 1984.
Cunningham filed his federal appeal last week, The Oregonian reported in its Wednesday editions. If his case makes its way through that process, he could be the first Oregon prisoner to be executed against his will since 1962; two inmates were put to death in the mid-1990s, but they had abandoned their appeals.
Besides being a matter of life and death for Cunningham, the case could affect the other 28 death row inmates.
The federal courts will evaluate Oregon’s death penalty statute. If those courts uphold the law against Cunningham’s constitutional challenge, the rest of the men on death row will have fewer hurdles to clear before execution.
On the other hand, if the courts agree with Cunningham, Oregon may have to retry its death row inmates.
“It certainly has the potential for relieving some of the bottleneck,” said Kevin Neely, spokesman for the Oregon Department of Justice. But “if they find that the system is flawed, that may in fact have a significant impact on our ability to move these (cases) through at all.”
Cunningham, 37, admitted killing Shannon Faith, a hitchhiker he agreed to drive from Coos Bay to Eugene in October 1991. But the key to his death sentence was the jury’s belief that he raped Faith and killed her to cover it up.
In Oregon, killing someone is not enough to earn a death sentence. At least one of more than a dozen “aggravating” circumstances must exist, such as killing a child or a police officer, killing people during the commission of certain crimes, or killing someone to conceal a crime.
Cunningham says he had consensual sex with Faith. His federal appeal claims that police failed to turn over evidence that backed up his claim that she attacked him in an alcoholic rage.
This is one of several claims specific to Cunningham’s case that probably would not affect the other men on death row.
But the appeal also takes aim at Oregon’s 1984 death penalty initiative, which includes a separate sentencing proceeding. After the jury convicts a defendant of aggravated murder, jurors must unanimously agree on the answers to four questions to impose the death sentence.
One of Cunningham’s claims is against the second question, which asks the jury “whether there is a probability that the defendant would commit criminal acts of violence that would constitute a continuing threat to society.”
C. Renee Manes, Cunningham’s attorney, said psychological and psychiatric groups have “rejected the concept” that a person can be accurately diagnosed as a future danger.
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