Convicted Killer Seeks Death Penalty Prisoner Berates Those Trying To Block His Execution

Berating those seeking to block his execution as “idiots,” Harry Charles Moore says he’s ready to become the second condemned killer to be put to death under Oregon’s 12-year-old capital punishment law.

In fact, Moore says he’d like to be executed on his 56th birthday.

“I just think it would be great to come into the world on May 10 and leave this world on May 10,” Moore said Thursday in his first interview since the Oregon Supreme Court on Dec. 6 cleared the way for his execution.

If he gets his way, Moore would follow Douglas Franklin Wright’s journey to the specially constructed death chamber at the Oregon State Penitentiary.

Wright was executed by lethal injection Sept. 6 after refusing all further appeals of his convictions for luring several homeless men to the woods of central Oregon and shooting them to death.

Moore is to be executed for the shooting deaths of his mother-in-law and father-in-law in Salem in June 1992. He said he is not afraid of dying and no longer wants to live among the “sick animals” on death row.

“People can have a life anyplace,” he said. “But when they stick you right in the bowels of evil itself, I just can’t handle it.”

Barring any unexpected legal delays, Moore’s execution could come as soon as six months from now, state lawyers have said.

A spokeswoman for the Oregon Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty said Thursday the coalition hasn’t decided whether to pursue legal action aimed at blocking Moore’s execution.

But Kathy Pugh noted that during one court appearance Moore once threw himself down a flight of stairs at the Marion County Courthouse in an apparent suicide attempt.

That raises questions about whether Moore is capable of making a rational decision about whether to volunteer to be the next condemned killer put to death in Oregon, Pugh said.

Moore said, however, that he is ready to “check out” and that the coalition and other death penalty opponents should mind their own business.

“It’s idiots like that who got Hitler into power,” he said. “They are all worried about these poor endangered species on death row.”

Moore said he was happy the night that Wright was executed for killing the homeless men. He noted that Wright had served time in prison for the 1969 murders of a woman and her mother and also confessed to kidnapping, molesting and killing a 10-year-old boy.

“If that SOB had been executed back then (for the 1969 slayings), all of those other people would still be alive today,” he said.

Michael Mills, a Salem attorney who represented Moore during his murder trial, said Thursday he thinks Moore is capable of making a reasoned decision to drop all further appeals of his death sentence.

“He is bright and articulate. He just doesn’t want to spend the rest of his life in prison,” said Mills, who still corresponds with Moore.