V olume 17 ♦ N umber 9 ♦ M arch 3, 2000
P o rtla n d , O r e g o n
FREE
The dying game
Proposed to repeal Oregon’s death
penalty could force queers in the state
to examine capital punishment
by I nga
S orensen
f all goes as planned, Robert Acremant will
one day find himself anchored to a table
with two intravenous catheters inserted
into his body.
Through these tubes, which usually func
tion to promote life, will snake lethal solu
tions, including an ultra-fast-acting barbitu
rate in combination with a chemical paralytic
agent and potassium chloride—or, as Oregon
law requires, “other equally effective sub
stances sufficient to cause death.”
A heart monitor will be attached to deter
mine Acremant’s official moment of expira
tion.
Witnesses will be escorted to a spot where
they will have an exceptional opportunity to
ogle death in action.
Maybe Acremant will Here we are
squirm, maybe he’ll
gasp. He’ll piss his pants. today, with a
Conveniently, the table lesbian killer on
has been designed to
slightly elevate the con Oregon's Death
victed killer’s head so Row. Do queers
witnesses have full view
of the actual execution. in this state care
After the lethal con one way or
coction is infused, it
won’t take long before the other?
he’s gone.
“Goodbye, you shithead,” some may think,
“good riddance.” Others will somberly swing
their heads, mourning the act and fearing it
has just inched society closer to an unfath-
omably merciless place.
ive years ago, Acremant applied the
weapon of his choice to the heads of
Roxanne Kay Ellis and Michelle Abdill, a
devoted couple active in church and commu
Star of
Next nity.The women’s lives were tom from them
execution-style, with two bullets each to their
Best Thing nms
skulls.
Their bound corpses were found Dec. 7,
good interview,
1995, in the back of Ellis’ truck in an apart
but Just Out's man ment complex parking lot in Medford, a city
of 55,000 near Oregon’s border with
on the scene (ails
California where the twosome lived and
worked.
to mount Everett
Acremant freely admitted killing the
women, as well as murdering a bisexual man
by Christopher D. Cuttone
in California.
Acremant said sexual orientation had
nothing to do with the women’s murders, but
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the fact that they were lesbians— information
he quickly surmised and later confirmed when
he asked Ellis point-blank—“made it easier”
to kill them, he said.
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