05/15/2002

By DOUG IRVING, kgw.com Staff

Attorneys for Christian Longo have asked a judge to throw out his aggravated-murder case, challenging as unconstitutional the death penalty that Longo faces.

The 132-page motion to dismiss Longo’s case portrays Oregon’s death penalty as vague and biased enough to be invalid. Attorney Ken Hadley called the motion “pretty standard,” filed as a matter of course in a capital trial.

Longo has been charged with the aggravated murders of his wife and three young children. Their bodies were pulled from coastal waterways late last year; Longo fled the country and was arrested in Mexico.

Christian Longo appears in court via closed-circuit television. (KGW File Photo)

Motion Challenges Words of Law

The motion, filed earlier this month, attacks the state’s death penalty as an unconstitutionally flawed punishment that depends largely on the whims of prosecutors. It also complains that the death penalty requires jurors to make what could be a religious decision.

The motion also takes issue with words and phrases used in the state’s death-penalty statutes, characterizing them as poorly defined and unconstitutionally vague. It names in particular “Deliberately,” “Probability,” “Criminal Acts of Violence” and “Continuing Threat to Society.”

And the motion argues that jurors must make an impossible prediction to impose a death penalty: Whether the criminal will pose a future danger. It complains that such predictions are notably unreliable and based on flawed assumptions, and compares them to medieval visions of the universe.

“It used to be the belief of most intelligent people that the earth was the center of the universe…,” the motion states. “We now know that this ‘fact’ is not a fact.”

No Mention of Case Specifics

The inch-thick court document makes no mention of Longo beyond the first few pages, and does not challenge the case against him. His attorney, Hadley, said attorneys often develop a standard template laying out well-rehearsed arguments that they can file at the beginning of any capital trial.

The motion was meant more to lock in arguments and complaints, in case attorneys choose to appeal a verdict into federal court. Hadley would not say whether he expects the Lincoln County court to dismiss charges against Longo based on the motion.

“It’s pretty standard,” he said. “They’re filed in all cases, but I think it’s what we’d call typical in an aggravated-murder case…. A good number of these issues have been ruled on before. It’s not very much new ground.”

Longo 'Pretty Well Isolated' at Jail

The Lincoln County District Attorney’s Office has announced that it will seek the death penalty against Longo. He is next scheduled to appear in court in October; Barnett said she expects his trial to get underway next spring or summer.

The body of his four-year-old son, Zachary, was found floating in a coastal slough shortly before Christmas. Divers found his three-year-old daughter, Sadie Ann, anchored underwater by a rock. Days later, divers pulled suitcases from another coastal inlet that held Longo's two-year-old daughter, Madison, and his wife, MaryJane.

The FBI named Longo to its list of the country’s most-wanted criminals. It launched a nationwide manhunt and posted his picture on national crime-stopper television shows. Mexican authorities and FBI agents caught Longo at a resort beach camp near Cancun in January.

He has not entered a plea to the seven charges of aggravated murder brought against him, and Hadley would not say how he plans to plea. Longo is being held at the Lincoln County Jail, where he is “pretty well isolated,” Hadley said. He is allowed to leave his cell only to visit the library or to exercise.

A team of two attorneys is defending Longo. The second, Steven Krasik of Salem, wrote the motion to dismiss the case but deferred all questions to Hadley.

Prosecutors Not Worried

His attorneys plan to file “a lot more motions,” Hadley said. Those will focus more on the specifics of the case against Longo, he said, but he declined to give specifics. “Certainly, those will be more case-specific,” he said.

The District Attorney’s Office has scheduled an internal meeting next week to go over the motion to dismiss the case and prepare a formal response. Barnett said she had flipped through the motion, and saw nothing that made her pause.

“It’s so regular,” she said. “The issues raised are the same or similar issues raised in cases like this.”