Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, June 3, 1993                   TAG: 9306030151
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Knight-Ridder/Tribune
DATELINE: SEATTLE                                LENGTH: Medium

FEDERAL JUDGE RULES HANGING TRIPLE KILLER IS NOT CRUEL

"Judicial hanging does not involve torture, lingering death, mutilation or the unnecessary and wanton infliction of pain," U.S. District Judge John Coughenour ruled Tuesday in the first federal court determination on the constitutionality of hanging.

In his eight-page decision, Coughenour said, "The pain necessarily involved in the extinguishment of life does not constitute cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution."

Coughenour's findings, and the record from a three-day hearing in his court last week, now go to the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which is weighing Campbell's appeal.

After presenting his findings in the case, Coughenour commented in court, "I will say for the record here today I do not believe in capital punishment."

Although the remark carries no legal weight, it will be relayed to the appeals court as part of the record.

Campbell, 38, is sentenced to die for the 1982 stabbing deaths of two women and an 8-year-old girl in Clearview. His legal appeals have enabled him to survive three scheduled execution dates in the past 11 years.

Coughenour ruled that Washington's hanging method, adopted from a U.S. Army manual, "has eliminated virtually all possibility of a tortured or lingering death."

Coughenour said the risk of decapitation or unnecessary pain is virtually nonexistent.

Basing his findings on medical testimony, Coughenour listed the types of injury hanging can cause to the condemned person's arteries, veins, airways, spinal cord, brain and heart and said those injuries would result in immediate or near-immediate unconsciousness, followed quickly by death.

The judge also drew from accounts of the January execution of Westley Allan Dodd at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla.

Dodd's execution "resulted in immediate or nearly immediate death" and was a "death without suffering," Coughenour ruled.

Earlier Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court turned down the state's request that it expedite the case by canceling the 9th Circuit Court's order that required a hearing on the constitutionality of hanging.

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor last month also rejected the state's request but criticized the 9th Circuit's "glacial progress" on the Campbell case.

Under Washington law, condemned murderers are hanged unless they opt for lethal injection, which generally is regarded as a more humane form of death.

Although lethal injection is used in several other states, including Texas, there have been no executions by that method in Washington. Dodd, who chose to be hanged because that's the way he killed one of his three child victims, was the first person executed in the state since 1963.

James Lobsenz, Campbell's attorney, said he was not surprised by Coughenour's decision and hopes the appellate court will reverse it.