Killer's quest: Allow organ donation after execution

An Oregon death row inmate is mounting an aggressive behind-bars campaign to donate his organs after he’s executed, in part to repay society for the gruesome murders of his wife and three young children.


Christian Longo, 37, says he wants to do more to take responsibility for killing his family and dumping their bodies in coastal bays nearly a decade ago than simply accepting execution by lethal injection.
“Why go out and waste your organs when you have the potential to go out and save six to 12 lives?” reasons Longo, whose voice is measured and articulate on the phone from Oregon State Penitentiary cell DRU31 in Salem.
His request to drop his appeals in exchange for being allowed to donate organs has been flatly denied by state corrections officials, who refuse to negotiate with a killer. It’s been denounced in principle as “morally reprehensible” by the nation’s organ donation officials and medical ethicists.

Don Ryan
 / 
ASSOCIATED PRESS


Plastic-covered photos of MaryJane Longo, at left, and, in photo at right, from left to right, her children Zachery Longo, Madison Longo and Sadie Ann Longo, sit on the dock at a makeshift memorial in Newport, Ore., in January 2002. Husband and father Christian Longo was later convicted of killing all four.

“I don’t think we want to be the kind of society that takes organs from prisoners,” said Dr. Paul R. Helft, director of the Charles Warren Fairbanks Center for Medical Ethics and Indiana University. "To do so would be to use unfree prisoners as a means to an end."
Lobbying in media, on Facebook
Longo’s quest, which boasts its own website and Facebook page and was featured in a recent New York Times op-ed piece, renews questions about whether changing inmate donation policies could help ease the nation’s dire shortage of transplantable organs â€" or whether it relies on an innately manipulative or vulnerable population of prisoners.
“It’s impossible to be sure that a person who is behind bars is making a decision they would make while walking down the street,” says Jeffrey Orlowski, executive director of the Association of Organ Procurement Organizations, the non-profit group that represents the nation’s 58 regional groups.

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