Letters to the Editor

Dear Ms. Lednicer, What a pleasure it has been to read the Fall 2012 issue of Willamette Lawyer, sent to my boss, John Potter, here at the Oregon Criminal Defense Lawyers Association. I truly enjoy quality magazine journalism, and I found this issue to be engaging, challenging, and a pleasure visually to read and absorb. I hope we will remain on your recipient list, as I look forward to reading future issues.

The magazine of the first law school in the Pacific Northwest | FALL 2012

Jennifer Root, Oregon Criminal Defense Lawyers Association

Last fall, Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber

We welcome your letters and comments. Please address all correspondence about the stories in the Lawyer to editor Lisa Grace Lednicer at: llednice@willamette.edu. Or send a letter to Willamette University College of Law, 245 Winter St. SE, Salem, OR, or call 503-370-6760.

announced he would no longer carry out executions, saying that Oregonians need to have a statewide conversation about the

DEATH PENALTY.

Steven Krasik JD’79 has that conversation every day.

We were gratified to see a portion of “Death Defier” quoted in the March 17, 2013 edition of the (Salem) Statesman Journal, in an editorial advocating that Oregon death row inmate Gary Haugen be granted his wish to be executed: “A morbid irony of capital punishment is that the needles and injection site are fully sterilized. ‘One reason is the possibility of a last-second stay of execution—it wouldn’t do for the governor to snatch the condemned from the jaws of death, only to have him or her die from an infection,’ stated an article in the Fall 2012 edition of Willamette Lawyer.”

Submit information for Class Action to Cathy McCann Gaskin, associate director of alumni relations. She can be reached at 503-370-6492 or wu-lawyer@willamette.edu. Print or type all submissions. Submission dates are Jan. 15 for the spring issue and July 15 for the fall issue.

DEATH

DEFIER By Todd Schwartz

As one of Oregon’s leading capital defense counsels,

Steven Krasik JD’79 believes passionately that

the means don’t justify

THE END.

20 | Willamette Lawyer

Fall 2012 | 21

We’d also like to share some exciting news: Willamette Lawyer won two awards from the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education. One was in the magazine category for overall presentation; the other was in the writing category for “Death Defier,” writer Todd Schwartz’s excellent profile of Steven Krasik JD’79. Krasik has served as lead or co-counsel on nearly 50 homicide cases, half of which were charged as capital murder. “He has spent countless hours in the company of Oregon’s most evil and most dangerous citizens, and he has never failed to discern some evidence of humanity in each of them,” Schwartz wrote. For a link to the magazine, please visit: willamette.edu/wucl/alumni/lawyer, and thank you again for reading Willamette Lawyer.

Spring 2013 | 5