Judge allows Kitzhaber to defend Haugen reprieve

SALEM, Ore. (AP) - A judge in Marion County will have to decide whether a death-row inmate can reject the governor's clemency that spared his life temporarily.

Gary Haugen, who was sentenced to death after a second murder conviction five years ago, was back in a Salem courtroom Wednesday as a judge took up his request to reinstate his execution.

Haugen rejects a reprieve granted last November by Gov. John Kitzhaber and argues that it's invalid without his acceptance.

Judge Timothy Alexander did not rule on Haugen's argument but scheduled a hearing for June 11. He also allowed Kitzhaber to defend the reprieve because the district attorney's office has declined to do so. In court filings, Marion County prosecutors sided with Haugen's legal argument and requested the execution proceed.

Haugen has voluntarily waived legal appeals that could delay his execution for years and has fought to speed his punishment in protest of a criminal justice system that he says is broken. Dressed in a red prison transport jumpsuit with long gray hair pulled into a ponytail, Haugen spoke briefly Wednesday to express his fear that he'll lose legal representation.

"Today I stand before you not because of my agenda but due to outside influences," Haugen told the judge. "My position has not changed, and I am in need of qualified counsel to represent me in challenging the governor's unsolicited reprieve."

Haugen's lawyer, Harrison Latto, declined to elaborate on the inmate's concerns.

Kitzhaber issued a reprieve weeks before Haugen was scheduled to be executed, saying he wouldn't allow an execution while in office and hoped to spark a move to repeal the death penalty. The governor said he has no sympathy for Haugen but opposes capital punishment and believes Oregon's death penalty laws are "compromised and inequitable."

Latto argues in legal briefs that two cases, from 1918 and 1926, require the subject of a reprieve to agree to it. He also argues that the reprieve is illegal because it has no specific expiration date — it lasts until the governor leaves office — and because it wasn't based on an analysis of Haugen's particular circumstances.

"Mr. Haugen does not feel that you are treating him mercifully by forcing him to remain in a kind of legal limbo that will last for an uncertain period of time, potentially as long as seven years, at the end of which he might, or might not be put to death," Latto wrote to Kitzhaber on March 12.

State Department of Justice lawyers representing Kitzhaber have not had to lay out their defense.

"The governor acted within his constitutional authority in issuing the reprieve," Kitzhaber spokesman Tim Raphael said.

Jeffrey Ellis, a lawyer and death penalty opponent who asked the state Supreme Court last year to block Haugen's execution, said Haugen's argument will be a tough sell. Haugen could only reject a reprieve if it had required something of him in return, Ellis argued.

"The governor made it very clear in his reprieve announcement that he wasn't doing this for Mr. Haugen, he was doing it for the good of the public," Ellis told The Associated Press.

Haugen was serving a life sentence for the 1981 murder of his former girlfriend's mother when he was sentenced to death for the 2003 killing of a fellow inmate.

Oregon has executed two people since voters reinstated the death penalty in 1984. Both of them, like Haugen, abandoned their appeals.

The Oregon Department of Corrections has returned $18,000 worth of lethal injection drugs purchased for Haugen's execution.

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press.