Oregon's high court upholds killer's death sentence

By Brad Cain

The Associated Press

SALEM - The Oregon Supreme Court upheld the death sentence Friday against a man convicted of killing two brothers with an 18-inch Japanese sword as they slept in a campsite in a Clackamas County.

Karl Anthony Terry sought to have his aggravated murder convictions and death sentence overturned on various grounds, including that the victims' mother should not have been allowed to testify during the penalty phase of his trial.

The state's highest court turned aside those arguments, leaving Terry as one of 26 men on death row at the Oregon State Penitentiary.

Terry, 28, was convicted in 1995 of fatally stabbing Jeffrey Brown, who was 23, and Dale Brown, who was 22. Their bodies were found Aug. 7, 1994, at a Willamette River beach campsite.

The brothers, who had gone camping with Terry to celebrate Dale Brown's birthday, were each stabbed several times as they slept.

Prosecutors said that Terry, who had been friends with Jeffrey Brown for several months, was angry at what Terry perceived was Dale Brown's interference with that relationship, in which Terry had dominated Jeffrey Brown.

During the penalty phase of the trial, the victims' mother, Pat Brown of San Diego, was allowed to read a statement to the jury in which she mourned the loss of her two sons and the fact that she and her husband would never have grandchildren.

"Mr. Terry, you have taken that from us when you murdered our sons, Jeffrey and Dale," she said in court.

Terry's attorney argued that the statement was inadmissible because at the time the brothers were killed, Oregon law did not allow victims to testify at the penalty phase.

By the time the case went to trial in 1995, though, the Legislature had passed a law allowing so-called victim impact evidence.

In upholding Terry's death sentence, the Supreme Court agreed with state lawyers who said the mother's statement to jurors couldn't be raised as an issue on appeal because it wasn't mentioned at trial.

It could be years before Terry faces execution, however, since he can now pursue post-conviction relief as well as federal appeals.

Kevin Neely, spokesman for Oregon Attorney General Hardy Myers, said none of the inmates on Oregon's death row faces imminent execution.

"We're years away. Most of the inmates have a number of options in the federal courts that they haven't used yet," Neely said.

Oregon last carried out executions by lethal injections in 1996 and 1997.