Emptying Oregon’s death row
By 
Kate Brown did not end her term popular with the state’s voters, but she was a good governor and is going out on a high note:
Gov. Kate Brown announced Tuesday that she would commute the sentences of all 17 individuals on Oregon’s death row to life in prison without the possibility of parole, the latest in her end-of-term string of clemency decisions.
“I have long believed that justice is not advanced by taking a life, and the state should not be in the business of executing people — even if a terrible crime placed them in prison,” Brown said in a statement sent out in a press release. “This is a value that many Oregonians share.”
The governor also directed the Department of Corrections to dismantle the state’s death chamber.
Oregon has not executed anyone on death row for a quarter century and Brown continued the moratorium that former Gov. John Kitzhaber put in place in 2011. Governor-elect Tina Kotek, who like Brown and Kitzhaber is a Democrat, is personally opposed to the death penalty based on her religious beliefs and said during the campaign that she would continue the moratorium.
The elections of 2014 and 2016 makes national abolition of the death penalty a distant prospect. But it has become an increasingly disused regional outlier practiced by a few atavistic states and Donald Trump, which is I suppose the next best thing.