Authorities have confirmed that Oregon’s oldest death row inmate has died of natural causes.
The Oregon Department of Corrections said 67-year-old Mark Allen Pinnell died Monday morning at the Two Rivers Correctional Institution infirmary.
Gov Kate Brown denied clemency for Pinnell in October after his lawyers asked he be allowed to spend his final days in hospice instead of prison.
He had severe chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
Pinnell was one of the first to seek clemency after former Gov John Kitzhaber declared a moratorium on executions in 2011.
He was sentenced to death in 1988 after he and co-defendant Donald Cornell robbed and killed 65-year-old John Wallace Ruffner, who was tied up and died of suffocation, in 1985.
Lawyers from the federal public defender’s office said Pinnell has been weakened by pulmonary disease and relied on an inmate helper, a wheelchair, an oxygen machine and many medications.
The lawyers also said Pinnell’s sentence was far harsher than that of his co-defendant, who was released in 2011 after 26 years in prison.
‘Mark’s case is a perfect example of how uneven and arbitrary the death penalty can be, and underscores the governor’s longstanding concerns about such an irreversible penalty,’ the lawyers wrote in a notice to the media.
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