I was dumbfounded. It was a big-news murder case of statewide significance, the first one brought to trial under Oregon’s newly-reinstated death penalty, and here was a member of the jury on the telephone, complaining about the way I’d described her in the newspaper.
The circuit court judge had somberly ordered the jury to avoid reading media accounts of the trial and told them not to discuss the case with anyone. But the woman had not only read the story but called me up to talk about it.
I knew she was really a juror because I recognized her voice. During voir dire, jury selection, she’d been asked her opinion of the death penalty. She favored it. She said executing criminals, “Maybe sets an example.”
She said a man murdered a friend of hers in the 1940s. “She was murdered in November, he was apprehended in January and they hung him in June,” she said. “Justice was swift then.”
It was a striking exchange, but it didn’t get her dismissed by the defense. I reported it in my story and described her as “elderly.” That’s what made her mad.
I couldn’t believe she was calling me. Covering the courts — the law, justice — was a dead serious matter to me, and this case was huge. Oregon had argued bitterly about the death penalty for decades, getting rid of it under one ballot measure or court ruling and bringing it back under another. The latest switch, in 1984, authorized executing people for aggravated murder, and a smoldering bully named Jeffrey Scott Wagner, of Linn County, was the first to stand trial under the new law. I was damned sure not going to be party to a mistrial or appeal.
The defendant himself, Wagner, had called me from the county jail before the trial began. I told him he needed to tell his attorney he’d spoken to me, and that if he called me again I’d report what he said. I think he was testing the waters for what came later. “I didn’t say anything,” he said.
With the jury selected, testimony was due to start up that day. I marched ashen-faced over to the Linn County Courthouse, walked back to the judge’s chambers and told his secretary I needed to talk to him and it was important. His Honor sat at his desk and listened. I said a juror had called me, and told him which one. He nodded gravely and thanked me for bringing this matter to the court’s attention.
I took my front row seat in the courtroom, relieved. The judge came in. All rose.
Tending the truth can be a lonesome beat. The city council or school board may duck into private executive session to discuss a sensitive topic, and you’re the only member of the public allowed in to hear what they say. And you’re the only person who’s going to speak up if the discussion strays across the line of what’s allowed.
It might be just you in attendance when a line of puffy public officials snip a ribbon with giant scissors or put on hardhats and awkwardly turn some dirt with gold-painted shovels. Just you and your notepad and the grasping property developer as the puffy officials hail strategic tax deferrals and bright prospects for gobs of jobs.
It might be just you, checking on the flame. Who else is going to check campaign donations, ask for the police report, review the court file, sit through the drone of a three-hour public hearing or go listen to what they’re saying on the picket line? Sometimes we’re the only ones who show up.
This murder case happened when I covered courts and county government for the wondrous Albany Democrat-Herald, the Demagogue-Herald as we called it in the newsroom. The D-H. I covered courts for the first six years of my career, at the D-H and before that at the beloved Springfield News. I thought it was damn important, because that was where you finally learned the truth of what happened. Cops and prosecutors often hid things from reporters during investigations, understandably, but at trial was where the truth came out. Witnesses, under oath, sat up next to the judge and testified in open court. There was a dignity and formality to it that still deserves tending in a democratic society.
But in this murder case, Jeff Wagner intended to be the ringmaster in an angry, calculated circus.
Every homicide is a mix of brutality and stupidity, I suppose. The dumbest murder I ever covered was a shooting outside a redneck tavern in a mean little town, and it literally began inside the tavern with an argument and a face slap over which was better, Fords or Chevys. I forget which one was favored by the shooter and which by the victim. Our family always had Fords.
But anyway, in this court case the details were depressingly 1980s. Unsurprising. Wagner’s tiny, frightened ex-girlfriend wouldn’t take him back and was going to testify that he’d knocked her 3-year-old son down a flight of stairs. So he strangled her, stole her car and drove to San Francisco, where he was caught and extradited to Oregon.
In jail, awaiting trial, Wagner schemed to choke the system, too.
He won the court’s reluctant approval to represent himself — as was his right — but the judge appointed two lawyers to advise him. Mainly, the attorneys just sat beside Wagner and tried to whisper a few words. Wagner mainly ignored them. He then pleaded guilty to aggravated murder, saving the fireworks for the penalty phase of the trial.
Under the new law, after guilt was determined, a jury had to answer three questions: Was the killing deliberate, was Wagner likely to commit future violent crimes that constituted a continuing threat to society, and was the killing an “unreasonable response” to any provocation by the victim. If the jury unanimously answered “yes” to all three, the judge was required to impose the death penalty.
As jury selection began, it quickly became clear Wagner was purposefully approving jurors who favored the death penalty. The prosecution and defense each had the right to exclude jurors who might be prejudiced one way or the other, but Wagner welcomed them. The panel included the older lady who said executing criminals might set an example for others and was mad at me for calling her elderly.
Wagner played her and everybody for fools. He later told me he’d even shaped his beard to a point, so he’d look like the devil. He wanted the jurors to think he was evil. Which he was, of course.
Trying to show Wagner would be a continuing threat to society if he wasn’t executed, the prosecution called a witness, a slight, nervous young man, who testified Wagner had hit him in the head while awaiting trial in the jail. From the counsel table, Wagner snarled at the man and accused him of provoking him by being noisy. “Isn’t it true,” he demanded, “that when you get excited you have a high-pitched woman’s voice?”
It got worse. For his closing statement, Wagner paced back and forth in front of the jury box, seemingly seething with rage. He said the young mom had deserved to die. He said he could have made it much worse for her. “What’s the big deal?” he asked.
In his right hand he carried a sharp pencil, holding it like a knife as he paced within easy striking distance of the jurors. A young sheriff’s deputy seated next to the jury box slid silently to the edge of his wooden chair, hands on the arms, coiled to spring up and grab Wagner if he attacked the jurors.
The jury took 90 minutes and obligingly answered “yes” to each of the three questions, assuring a death sentence. Out in the courthouse hallway, one of the attorneys who advised Wagner compared him to a boxer who takes a dive but puts up enough of a fight that it doesn’t attract attention of the boxing commission. “Everything he did was calculated,” the attorney said.
I began my story, “Jeffery Scott Wagner got what he wanted Wednesday afternoon.” Misspelling his first name, by the way.
Later, in an interview at the state prison up in Salem, Wagner acknowledged he’d put on a show for the jury. “I knew I had to make them hate me,” he told me.
He eventually claimed he’d set out from the start to prove the death penalty law was flawed. “If I could manipulate the state and the whole system, who might be an innocent victim?” he said.
Not him, certainly. Such a hateful person. Good Lord, as my mom would have said.
But it seemed like none of it really mattered. The case went to automatic review by the Oregon Supreme Court, then the U.S. Supreme Court took it up along with others of similar legal issue ilk. To make a long judicial review short, the system clattered back into place and Wagner was re-sentenced to life in prison.
The whole thing was fucked up. I misspelled Wagner as “Jeffery” in multiple stories, stubbornly clinging to the way it was spelled on the district attorney’s information sheet contained in the official court file. Damn. When I finally spelled it right and told my editor I’d spelled it wrong in all the previous stories, my editor said, “What?”
That was the legendary Hasso Hering. More about him and that fun, scrappy D-H newsroom later, probably.
Then Wagner represented himself. Then the juror called me. Then I told the damn judge. Then all rose and the elderly woman stayed on the damn jury and nobody said a word about it in open court. Then the judge just went through the motions, carefully. Then the lawyers, two prosecutors and two defense advisers — all experienced and accomplished, by the way — followed along. The lawyers didn’t grimace, stand up in open court and say, “This is bullshit, your honor.” I wish they had.
Then Wagner smacked other prisoners in the horrible Linn County Jail. Hit at least two guys on separate occasions and had another murder defendant — unrelated case — in a headlock when jailers broke it up. (Interesting aside: The other murder defendant was convicted in his case, then wrote me a letter from the state Pen saying he was suing me for I think $10 million.)
Then Jeffery preened and pranced before the jury. Then he’d call me on the phone. He was so damn hateful.
He was a violent bully. He was a liar. First he said he picked a jury and did his steaming stalker impression in the courtroom because he wanted to be sentenced to death. He even had his chief adviser attorney issue a signed statement about it when the trial ended. It was dated two months earlier and signed “Jeff Wagner.”
It said he had decided “after long and careful deliberation” that he didn’t want to spend long years in prison. He was only 25 or so then.
But then once he got to the Oregon State Penitentiary in Salem, he told a different story. He said he’d done it all because he wanted to show the new death penalty law was legally flawed.
“What I set out to do was prove the system they have is not infallible,” he told me.
Oh. Just a public service, I guess. Bringing clarity to America’s halls of justice and so on.
He was a liar. A manipulator. And violent. I don’t know if anything he said was true. I don’t know what he believed. He’s not worth more thought than that.
As for me, I wrote my damn stories, mostly straightforward and straight faced. Once in a while glancing at the flame when it sputtered. Because sometimes we’re the only ones who tend it.
It was bullshit, your honor.
Photo taken March 1986 by Stanford Smith, Albany Democrat-Herald. Murderer Jeff Wagner, left, telling me some more stuff and me writing it down.
I was literally grabbed by the police chief and thrown out of an illegal Umatilla school board session for calling them on it and reading the law to them when I worked for the EO. Made headlines across the state the next day. Interviewed a murderer from Washington who wrote a book about rehabilitating prisoners. Was the deskman for kidnap-murder spree story involving one of our stringers that ended in Pennsylvania, and won the AP Managing Editors Award for our coverage. Then the economy collapsed in the Northwest and we all lost our jobs, and I taught high school journalism, photography, and English for the next 31 years. Love your insider stories!