structural:summarization
Oregon

Oregon revised the state's criminal homicide laws in 2023, prior to that the state used the common law charges of murder and aggravated murder. The revision was due to the passage of Senate Bill 1013 which added separate degrees for murder, adding second degree murder and first degree murder, and retaining aggravated murder as the state's only capital offense. The Oregon Legislative Assembly voted to retain the death penalty as the maximum sentence for aggravated murder, despite Oregon having a legislative moratorium on the death penalty since 2011 when Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber stopped enforcing it, and since then Governor's Kate Brown and Tina Kotek have taken the same stance and commuted all death sentences to life without parole; the last person executed in Oregon was in 1997. Oregon voters decided by a majority of 65% to add the death penalty to the Oregon Constitution in 1984 and therefore would take a constitutional amendment to remove it entirely, there have been several attempts to remove the death penalty but as of 2025 none made it past the hurdles required to be on a ballot for the voters to consider.