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Merah, Brown’s spokeswoman, said Hedquist’s conditions of sentence commutation include lifetime supervision and GPS ankle monitoring for at least six months. Oregonians granted clemency have demonstrated they have turned their lives around and pose a low risk to the public, she said. “Hedquist admitted killing her to eliminate a witness in hope of preventing his own capture.”īrown accused “several district attorneys” of scoring political points by stoking public fears in these cases. “Hedquist tricked the victim into driving him to a rural Douglas County location where he shot the victim execution-style in the back of the head and dumped her body along the road,” Clarkson and Kast said. Marion County District Attorney Paige Clarkson and Sheriff Joe Kast, whose county includes Salem, issued a public safety notice Saturday in which they expressed “significant safety concerns surrounding the sudden and ill-planned governor’s commutation.” This month, Hedquist was released to the Salem home of a former prison chaplain after a suitable place could not be found for him in Douglas County, where Hedquist was from. but somehow just being with them and listening lightened their burden before death stepped in to take them." “So I sat, I listened, their teary-eyed regurgitation of their crimes burned my ears, they left a bitter taste in my mouth as I consumed the confessions. “I couldn’t have known all those years ago that death would bring my humanity back,” Hedquist wrote. Hedquist wrote about caring for the dying inmates in a piece that was awarded "honorable mention in memoir" in PEN America's 2019 Prison Writing Contest. While locked up in the Oregon State Penitentiary in Salem, Hedquist spent over 20 years volunteering for hospice care services, said Liz Merah, Brown's spokeswoman. “Clemency is an action I reserve for individuals who have demonstrated that they have made incredible changes in their lives to rehabilitate themselves, take accountability for their crimes, and dedicate themselves to making their communities a better place,” Brown said. However, Brown said she has denied most clemency requests. “The Governor continues to let violent criminals out of prison, and Democrats in the majority remain silent.” “As with many others, the facts of this case are outrageous and brutal,” Oregon Senate Republican Leader Tim Knopp said Tuesday. The clemency of Hedquist has fueled Republican complaints that Brown, a Democrat who is not running for reelection this year because of term limits, is soft on crime. The Democrat-dominated Oregon Legislature passed such a law in 2019, but the state Supreme Court has ruled it's not retroactive.
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Some two dozen states have banned sentencing juveniles to life without parole, according to the Washington, D.C.-based Sentencing Project, which advocates for humane responses to crime.
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Kate Brown, in her office at the state Capitol, Feb. Supreme Court, in a 2012 ruling, said only the rare, irredeemable juvenile offender should serve life in prison, but that applies in federal cases. “Teenagers, even those who have committed terrible crimes, have a unique capacity for growth and change,” Brown said in social media posts in which she applauded Biden's action, adding: “We are a state and a nation of second chances.” On Tuesday, Brown defended her clemencies, comparing them to President Joe Biden's granting of clemency Tuesday to 78 people, though those were all for nonviolent crimes.
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Hedquist, now 45, was convicted in Douglas County Circuit Court in 1995. Brown in this case is shocking and irresponsible,” Douglas County Sheriff John Hanlin said Tuesday in a statement.