Oregon Governor Urged To Spare Five On Death Row -- Death-Penalty Foes Want Roberts To Commute Sentences

SALEM, Ore. - Opponents of the death penalty say Gov. Barbara Roberts has a moral obligation to act on her convictions and commute the sentences of five men on Oregon's death row.

Roberts, who opposes the death penalty, leaves office Jan. 9. She has given no indication of how she will handle the requests by the inmates to commute their sentences.

"We believe in all cases the death penalty is wrong, costly, ineffective and has the danger of convicting innocent persons," said Portland attorney Mark Kramer, a member of the Oregon Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.

The five inmates asking the governor to commute their sentences include Dayton Leroy Rogers, the killer in Oregon's worst serial-murder case, and James M. Isom, who wouldn't be eligible for the death sentence under today's laws.

Marion County District Attorney Dale Penn said he believes it would require an "extremely unusual set of circumstances to justify commutation" when juries have decided the circumstances warrant death.

"The people of Oregon overwhelmingly have stated at the ballot box that they want the death penalty to be utilized," Penn said.

Most of the rest of Oregon's 17 death-row inmates are expected to make requests by Dec. 9.

By law, Roberts cannot act on a request for commutation until at least 30 days after it is filed.

Isom was sentenced to death in Multnomah County for the 1986 stabbing death of Barbara A. Maher in a Portland motel.

At the time of his crime, Isom was a walkaway from a Washington work-release center. The escape was a felony at the time; now it is a misdemeanor. The difference made him guilty of aggravated murder and thus eligible for death.

Others who want their death sentences to be commuted:

-- Jesse C. Pratt, sentenced from Klamath County for the 1986 killing of Carrie L. Love. The 20-year-old victim was bound and gagged, stabbed repeatedly and run over by a truck.

-- Dayton LeRoy Rogers, sentenced from Clackamas County in 1989 for the Molalla forest murders. He was convicted of aggravated murder and sentenced to die for killing six women. He also was sentenced to life in prison for slaying a seventh woman, and his attorney said Rogers admitted to killing an eighth woman but he was not charged in that case.

-- Jeffrey R. Williams, sentenced out of Coos County in 1989 for the murders of two West German students, Unna Tuxen and Kathrin Reith, hitchhiking up the Oregon Coast.

-- Grant Steven Charboneau, sentenced from Multnomah County, for the 1992 torture killing of a young woman who lived under the Marquam Bridge.