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Thread: Craig Dennis Bjork Sentenced to LWOP in 2013 OR Slaying of Cellmate Joseph Akins

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    Craig Dennis Bjork Sentenced to LWOP in 2013 OR Slaying of Cellmate Joseph Akins

    Inmate's killer not identified

    Whoever is eventually charged with the murder of a state prison inmate could end up on Oregon’s death row.

    Four of the 37 inmates on death row — including Gary Haugen, whose bid to die voluntarily was blocked June 20 by the Oregon Supreme Court — are there because their aggravated murder convictions involve the killing of an inmate.

    Officials on the Marion County Homicide Assault Response Team were continuing to investigate Monday the death of Joseph Akins Jr., 45, a convicted murderer who was found dead Saturday in his cell at the Oregon State Penitentiary in Salem.

    The state medical examiner determined Sunday that Akins died of “inflicted trauma,” and officials said a yet-to-be-identified suspect was being held in segregation at the prison. The name was withheld on instructions from the Marion County district attorney, pending completion of the team’s investigation.

    Akins had been in prison on one count of murder since January 2008. His earliest release date was in December 2022.

    He was one of two men sentenced in connection with the rape and stabbing of Susan Rae Hosler of Milwaukie in 1994. The crime went unsolved for years, but DNA evidence in 2002 linked Andrew Tignor to the killing, and further investigation linked Akins. They were brothers-in-law, and both were charged in 2004.

    Under Oregon’s definition of aggravated murder, defendants can be sentenced to death — or life without the possibility of parole — if they were convicted of murder anywhere previously, or if they were in custody at the time of the murder.

    In the Haugen case, he and Jason Van Brumwell had been convicted of murder previously, Haugen for the 1981 killing of the mother of his former girlfriend, and Van Brumwell for the 1994 killing of a Eugene convenience-store clerk. Both had been sentenced to life in prison.

    In 2003 they killed David Shane Polin, 31, in the activities yard of the state penitentiary and were convicted in 2007 of aggravated murder.

    Also among death-row inmates is David Lee Cox, 48, who was convicted of aggravated murder for the 1998 stabbing death of Mark Dean Davis in the activities yard of the penitentiary. Cox said Davis had stolen drugs from him.

    Two other inmates were convicted of aggravated murder in the 2008 death of Antonio Barrantes-Vasquez in the yard of the penitentiary.

    But only Isaac Creed Agee, now 36, was sentenced to death for the killing in June 2011.

    James Demetri Davenport, the other inmate, was ruled ineligible for a death sentence because of mild mental retardation. The U.S. Supreme Court decided in 2002 that execution of mentally ill defendants violated the federal constitutional guarantee against cruel and unusual punishments, and Davenport was sentenced in a separate proceeding in 2010.

    http://www.statesmanjournal.com/arti...not-identified
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  2. #2
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    Cellmate suspected in homicide of Oregon State Penitentiary inmate

    Authorities have identified the cellmate of Oregon State Penitentiary prisoner Joseph Akins as the suspect in Akins' strangulation death Saturday.

    Oregon State Police said the cellmate, Craig Dennis Bjork, 53, is being held in a segregated cell as the investigation continues.

    Bjork was convicted of murdering a fellow prisoner in 1997 in Minnesota. He was transferred to Oregon in January, the Oregon Department of Corrections said.
    Akins, 45, was discovered dead in his cell around 10 a.m. Saturday. The medical examiner determined that he died of asphyxiation due to strangulation. The death was also ruled a homicide.

    Akins was convicted in 2007 of one count of murder in the 1994 rape-and-stabbing death of Susan Rae Hosler, a Milwaukie mother who was kidnapped from a restaurant parking lot in Oregon City. Department of Corrections records show Akins' earliest release date was Dec. 15, 2022.

    The suspect in Akins' killing, Bjork, was convicted of the 1982 murders of his two sons, ages, 1 and 3; his girlfriend and another woman in Minnesota. He was serving a life sentence in the Stillwater prison when he killed an inmate in 1997, according to news accounts at the time.

    Bjork was convicted of first-degree murder in the beating death of the inmate and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. According to a Minnesota Supreme Court decision affirming his conviction, Bjork initially told investigators that he killed the other inmate as a way to get moved to a new cell.

    After the inmate's killing, Bjork was held in Minnesota's state's maximum-security facility, Oak Park Heights, according to the Minnesota Department of Corrections. All inmates at the prison are housed in single-occupancy cells and are restricted to their units for 23 hours each day, similar to Oregon's Death Row.

    It is unclear how long Bjork had been sharing a cell with Akins. It is also unclear what factors led the corrections department to house Bjork with another inmate despite his conviction for killing a fellow prisoner in Minnesota.

    In Oregon, a murder of a person while in custody can be prosecuted as a capital offense. Also, those convicted of a previous homicide can face the death penalty for committing another murder. Death row inmates Gary Haugen, Jason Brumwell, David Lee Cox and Isaac Agee all were sentenced to death on their convictions for killing a fellow prisoner.

    http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-no..._homicide.html
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    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    April 25, 2016

    Trial underway for man accused of killing inmate

    The trial of a convicted murderer from Minnesota accused of killing his cellmate at the Oregon State Penitentiary in Salem in 2013 is underway at Marion County Circuit Court following an indictment made in late 2015.

    Craig Dennis Bjork, 56, was charged with aggravated murder after another convicted murderer, Joseph Akins, 45, was discovered dead, strangled in their shared cell in August 2013. If found guilty, Bjork could face the death penalty.

    In 1982, a Minnesota court convicted Bjork of killing his two young sons, his girlfriend and a Minneapolis prostitute, according to the Associated Press. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. At the time of the killings, Bjork went by the name Craig Dennis Jackson.

    It is not Bjork's first time standing trial for murder inside a correctional facility.

    In 1997, while serving his sentence at a Minnesota prison, Bjork beat another inmate to death with a pipe. According to court records, Bjork told Minnesota corrections department investigators the killing was "not personal." He said he wanted to get prison officials' attention and punish them for moving him to a different cell block. Bjork said he wanted to kill a staff member but instead killed inmate Edwin Curry, 41, because he was nearby.

    “There's a saying in the business world, location, location, location, huh, location is everything,” Bjork told investigators, according to court records.

    The Associated Press reported that Bjork was transferred from Minnesota to an Oregon prison in January 2013 as part of an interstate compact.

    The compact allows prisoners to be sent to out-of-state facilities due to the high-profile nature of their crimes, inmate safety or security issues, according to Oregon Department of Corrections spokeswoman Betty Bernt. Oregon has interstate compacts with 32 states.

    Even though Bjork faces charges for a crime that allegedly took place in an Oregon Department of Corrections facility, Bernt did not have information available on Bjork. She referred any information requests on Bjork's incarceration status to his home state of Minnesota.

    No motive was provided for the slaying of Akins, and Bjork has not lodged a plea with Marion County Circuit Court. Akins was convicted of murder in 2008 for the 1994 rape and killing of a woman in Multnomah County and was in the midst of serving a 22-year, six-month sentence.

    According to the Associated Press, Bjork was immediately held in a segregation after Akins was discovered dead in his cell at the Oregon State Penitentiary.

    An autopsy found that he died of asphyxiation caused by strangulation, and the death was ruled a homicide.

    Bjork was arraigned on Dec. 17, 2015. His lawyers at the time motioned to disqualify Marion County Circuit Court Judge Courtland Geyer from proceeding over the trial, claiming Bjork would not receive a fair and impartial trial. Judge David Leith was assigned to the trial.

    Bjork later requested new representation. In an affidavit, he said his attorneys has "serious ethical issues" and showed a complete disregard for his wishes. Following the motion, he was appointed a new attorney.

    According to court records, Bjork is housed at Snake River Correctional Institution in Ontario, Oregon.

    His next status check hearing is schedule for July 14 at 8:15 a.m. at the Marion County Courthouse.

    http://www.statesmanjournal.com/stor...mate/83495832/
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  4. #4
    Moderator Ryan's Avatar
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    September 2, 2017

    Minnesota 'family killer' could face death penalty for killing Oregon cellmate

    Craig Dennis Bjork, now 57, could be the first Minnesota prisoner sentenced to death in modern history.

    Thirty-five years ago, a Minnesota judge sentenced Craig Dennis Bjork to three consecutive life sentences in prison for the grisly murders of two women and his two young children. But that didn’t stop Bjork from killing again.

    Now the notorious mass murderer could face the death penalty.

    Minnesota abolished capital punishment in 1911. But after decades of violence and escape plots from behind prison walls, the state transferred Bjork to Oregon, where he allegedly killed another prisoner. Prosecutors are seeking capital punishment, meaning Bjork, now 57, could be the first Minnesota prisoner sentenced to death in modern history, according to corrections staff and criminal justice experts.

    Human rights groups say the unusual case shines a spotlight on the “randomness” of the death penalty in America, and how geography determines if a crime is punishable by execution.

    “As a state that abolished the death penalty more than 100 years ago, Minnesota should consider refusing to transfer its prisoners — and the taxpayer dollars that go with them — to states where the death penalty remains on the books,” said Michele Garnett McKenzie, deputy director for nonprofit The Advocates for Human Rights. Bjork’s attorney in Oregon, Gordon Mallon, said he’s looking into whether Bjork being committed to Minnesota’s corrections system will be an issue in the case.

    Oregon prison officials denied a request to interview Bjork in person. In letter correspondence, Bjork agreed to talk over the phone, saying he had “nothing to lose.” But he reneged after a Star Tribune reporter declined to pay him $100.

    “Nothing is free,” wrote Bjork, saying he needed the money for postage and phone calls related to the interview, much more than the actual costs for these services.

    “If not, I wish you well,” Bjork wrote. “I’m genuine.”

    Murder of the century

    Bjork’s story as a notorious prisoner begins in March 1982. After his girlfriend, Ramona Yurkew, had been missing for four days, Minneapolis police searched Bjork’s duplex unit near Powderhorn Park.

    There, they found Yurkew’s body beneath a bed. Police also discovered the lifeless bodies of Bjork’s sons, ages 1 and 3, along with Gwendolyn Johnson, a 20-year-old woman with a history of prostitution arrests. All had been strangled. Police called it the worst mass murder in the city since the turn of the century.

    After a month on the run, Bjork surrendered to police in Wichita, Kan. At the trial, a psychiatrist who’d interviewed Bjork said he had binged on amphetamine and alcohol. He’d killed Johnson after she solicited him for sex, and the next day choked his family and hid their bodies under beds.

    “I choked everybody with my hands,” Bjork said, according to the psychiatrist. “It was all peaceful. There was no bizarre episode. No running through the halls or clanging. In my eyes it ain’t murder. I was just taking care of everybody. I wasn’t trying to hurt nobody.”

    Kevin Burke, now a Hennepin County judge, took on Bjork’s defense pro bono. “It was a challenge,” Burke explained in a recent interview. And Burke was no stranger to ambitious cases; at the time he was also representing a cop killer.

    Burke had no illusions about his client’s role in the murders, but he argued Bjork was so detached from reality he didn’t understand his actions and should be found not guilty by reason of mental illness. He cast Bjork as a deeply troubled man who binged on drugs and alcohol to manage a serious personality disorder. His client had lost the internal battle, he told the court, and simply snapped into a fugue of violence.

    The judge rejected the insanity plea. He sentenced Bjork to three life terms, plus 20 more years for killing Johnson — all but guaranteeing he would die in prison.

    After the sentence, Bjork was a problem prisoner, known by other inmates as “The Family Killer.” One summer day in 1996, while serving a stint in solitary confinement, Bjork wrote an internal memo to the Stillwater prison warden demanding he be moved back to Oak Park Heights prison. If he didn’t comply, Bjork threatened to kill again.

    “I’m very homicidal,” he wrote, according to court records. “I’m very close to committing mass murder in Stillwater. Trust me minimum of 3 bodies, I’d go for 10 and come real close.” A prison psychologist interviewed Bjork and said he appeared capable of following through on his plan.

    On Thanksgiving Day 1997, a correctional officer, John Sward, found Bjork in the Stillwater prison kitchen mopping up a dark red liquid that looked a lot like blood.

    “What is going on?” he demanded, according to court documents.

    “It’s these beet cans making a big mess,” Bjork replied.

    It didn’t look like beet juice, the officer said.

    “I gotta get out of here,” Bjork said, and he walked out of the kitchen.

    Sward followed red drag marks through the kitchen to a garbage storage area. He lifted an overturned garbage cart and found Edwin Curry, another inmate who had been on kitchen duty that day. Curry had been bludgeoned with a pipe.

    Correctional officers searched the prison and found Bjork in the dining hall eating a candy bar and drinking a cup of milk. “It was nothing personal,” Bjork said, “but a few minutes more and you would have had a dead guard on your hands also.”

    Prison staff found a notebook in his cell with an underlined entry for that date: “Should have moved me, punks.”

    The trial of his life

    After Bjork killed Curry, the Minnesota Department of Corrections transferred him out of state through a program called the Interstate Corrections Compact. He ended up at Oregon State Penitentiary, a maximum-security facility in Salem.

    On Aug. 13, 2013, he killed a prisoner named Joseph Akins, according to a grand jury indictment filed in December 2015.

    The full details have not yet been made public, but Marion County prosecutor Matthew Kemmy confirmed his office is seeking the death penalty. In court filings, Bjork has called the killing self-defense.

    In a pretrial hearing earlier this year, Bjork lashed out at one of his defense attorneys, shouting for him to “shut up” during court proceedings and then speaking over the judge’s warnings to be quiet. “This idiot isn’t going to represent me,” he said, according to court documents filed by the prosecutor, and then he muttered insults under his breath.

    Bjork fired that attorney and Mallon took his case this spring. Prosecutors are asking that Bjork be restrained during the trial.

    Because of Oregon’s backlog on death penalty cases, the trial won’t take place until April 2019.

    Bjork will have to answer for more than just the Akins murder. Oregon law considers it aggravated murder when a person kills someone while incarcerated or intentionally kills after being convicted of murder. In addition to killing Akins, the indictment includes five more counts for the killings of his two children, Johnson, Yurkew and Curry.

    But even if a jury sentences Bjork to death, he may never be executed. Oregon currently has a moratorium on executions. And even if the temporary ban is lifted, it could be decades before Bjork is actually executed if he is convicted.

    “People have been sitting on death row for more than 30 years,” said Mallon, “and so there’s a question of whether he could live long enough to get executed.”

    http://www.startribune.com/minnesota...ate/442520273/

  5. #5
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    December 24, 2019

    A serial killer pleaded no contest for Salem prison murder. Here's why he didn't get the death penalty

    An Oregon inmate already convicted of killing five people — including his two toddler sons — was given another life sentence Monday after he pleaded no contest to murdering another inmate at the Oregon State Penitentiary.

    Following his plea, Craig Dennis Bjork, 60, was convicted of the 2013 first-degree murder of his cellmate Joseph Akins, 45.

    He faces a life sentence with a 30-year minimum.

    "There is no justice in this outcome," Marion County prosecutor Matthew Kemmy said. "Craig Bjork, a man who has literally killed men, women and children is no longer eligible for the death penalty under SB 1013."

    Bjork was originally charged with aggravated murder and faced the death penalty if convicted. But changes to the murder law by the 2019 Oregon Legislature forced prosecutors to amend the charges against him and take capital punishment off the table.

    Kemmy said the change in the law allowed Bjork to commit murder without consequence.

    "All we did, in fact, all we could do under this new law, was tack on another life sentence to the five life sentences that he is already serving (plus his sentence for escape from prison)," Kemmy said.

    Path of killing started 37 years ago

    Bjork's sentencing Monday put an end to the more than four-year-long criminal case, but the prison murder was just one chapter in his violent history.

    In 1982, after receiving calls from concerned family members, police entered Bjork's Minneapolis apartment to find the bodies of his girlfriend, Ramona Yurkew, another woman, Gwendolyn Johnson, and his two sons Joseph and Jason, ages 3 and 1.

    Bjork told a psychiatrist that Johnson, a 20-year-old with a history of prostitution arrests, had solicited him for sex. According to the Star Tribune, Bjork binged on amphetamines and alcohol before the murders. His defense attorney described him as a deeply troubled man with a personality disorder.

    Police believe the four were strangled separately and stuffed underneath the beds in the apartment. They believed the boys died three days before they were found.

    Between the time the children died and when their bodies were discovered, Bjork told his mother they were either napping or at the babysitters.

    fter the bodies were found, a warrant was issued for Bjork's arrest and he surrendered to police in Kansas.

    Minneapolis police called the killings the worst mass murder to hit the city, according to the Star Tribune.

    At the time of the killings, Bjork went by the name Craig Dennis Jackson.

    “I choked everybody with my hands,” Bjork said, according to the psychiatrist, the Star Tribune reported. “It was all peaceful. There was no bizarre episode. No running through the halls or clanging. In my eyes it ain’t murder. I was just taking care of everybody. I wasn’t trying to hurt nobody.”

    He pleaded not guilty and not guilty by reason of mental illness for the three counts of first-degree murder and one count of second-degree murder.

    According to court records, while in jail, Bjork told a deputy:

    "Don't stare at me like that, you know I did it and so does everyone else. You know, I'm not a bad guy at heart and that I didn't kill my wife. I'll do life for the others but I didn't kill my wife."

    Bjork previously had been suspected of killing his wife, whose body was found in Iowa, but he was never charged for her death.

    He was found guilty of all four murders and given four life sentences without the possibility of parole.

    Bjork killed to get officials' attention

    In 1997, while serving his sentence at a Minnesota prison, Bjork beat another inmate to death with a pipe. According to court records, Bjork told Minnesota corrections department investigators the killing was "not personal."

    He said he wanted to get prison officials' attention and punish them for moving him to a different cell block. Bjork said he wanted to kill a staff member but instead killed inmate Edwin Curry, 41, because he was nearby.

    “There's a saying in the business world, location, location, location, huh, location is everything,” Bjork told investigators.

    Bjork was transferred from Minnesota to an Oregon prison in January 2013 as part of an interstate compact.

    The compact allows prisoners to be sent to out-of-state facilities due to the high-profile nature of their crimes, inmate safety or security issues, according to Oregon Department of Corrections spokeswoman Betty Bernt. Oregon has interstate compacts with 32 states.

    Within seven months of Bjork's transfer to Oregon, Akins was discovered dead and strangled in their shared cell.

    No motive was provided for the slaying of Akins.

    Akins was convicted of murder in 2008 for the 1994 rape and killing of a woman in Multnomah County and was in the midst of serving a 22-year, six-month sentence.

    Bjork was immediately held in segregation after Akins was discovered dead in his cell at the Oregon State Penitentiary.

    An autopsy found that he died of asphyxiation caused by strangulation, and the death was ruled a homicide.

    Redefining aggravated murder

    During the four years of court proceedings and hearings, prosecutors stated they would be seeking the death penalty against Bjork.

    The case was marked by Bjork's repeated requests to switch attorneys, claiming he had ineffectual and biased counsel.

    He was set to stand trial in March.

    But the passage of Senate Bill 1013 drastically changed the course of his case.

    The bill, which was signed into law on Aug. 1, narrows Oregon's use of the death penalty by whittling down the number of crimes that qualify as aggravated murder — the only offense punishable by death.

    Previously, about 20 circumstances made a homicide qualify as aggravated murder, including:

    1. Murder for hire
    2. Murdering multiple people
    3. Torturing before killing
    4. The murder of someone under 14
    5. Murder during the course of a felony crime.

    Oregon legislators voted to limit these aggravating circumstances to only four:

    1. Terrorist killings of two or more people
    2. The premeditated murder of police officers
    3. Murder committed in a prison or jail by someone who was already convicted of murder
    4. The premeditated murder of a child under the age of 14.

    Marion County prosecutor Katie Suver said that although Bjork's crime of murdering another inmate in the Oregon State Penitentiary seemed like it would qualify as aggravated murder, the language of his charges in Minnesota did not match the language needed for prosecution under Oregon's new law.

    And although the law was initially believed to not be "retroactive" and would impact murders committed before SB 1013 when into effect, a decision by the Oregon Department of Justice found the opposite was true.

    In an email to Oregon prosecutors, Oregon Department of Justice Solicitor General Benjamin Gutman said the new law would have a significant impact on pending cases.

    DOJ officials who had reviewed the then-pending legislation concluded that a new, narrower definition of aggravated murder in SB 1013 did apply to pending cases — including cases that have been sent back for new penalty or guilt phases, Gutman said in the email.

    This meant most of those cases could no longer be prosecuted as capital aggravated-murder cases and would instead have to be tried as first-degree murder, which carries a presumptive sentence of life with the possibility of parole after 30 years.

    He said the conclusion came as a "surprise."

    "Many of us, myself included, were under the impression that SB 1005 ensured that SB 1013 would not apply to cases that had previously been tried and were being retried after an appeal or post-conviction relief," Gutman said. "There are news stories citing legislators as saying as much."

    Several aggravated murder charges in Marion County — including Bjork's, a double-fatal shooting and a Keizer mom suspected of murdering her 12-year-old — were dropped and changed to first-degree murder.

    Kemmy, who prosecuted the case against Bjork, said going forward, SB 1013 has made it almost impossible to charge someone with aggravated murder.

    Making a case for death penalty

    Death row has served as a tool for keeping the most dangerous criminals out of the general prison population, serving as the home for several inmates accused of killing others while behind bars.

    In the general population, inmates have greater access to outdoor recreation, privileges, classes and each other. So the threat of death row acted as an additional punishment for those already facing lengthy sentences.

    But now, Kemmy said, such inmates have nothing to lose, putting other inmates, corrections officers, teachers and staff at risk.

    Taking away the death penalty, he said, means that for those already serving life or near-life sentences, there is basically no additional punishment for taking lives.

    Bjork set forth several conditions before he agreed to plead no contest.

    Prosecutors agreed to return all seized property taken from the cell after Akins was found dead. They also agreed to admit that a television, 120 colored pencils and a plastic tote taken from Bjork's cell were lost and not in evidence.

    Marion County Judge Tracy Prall, who sentenced Bjork, agreed to sign a letter regarding where Bjork would serve his sentence.

    Following conversations between the judge and Oregon Department of Corrections, prison officials agreed to have a "meaningful discussion about placement options including administrative segregation." Bjork will remain at the Snake River Correctional Facility while Minnesota prison officials work to determine Bjork's ultimate location.

    Bjork threatened to withdraw his "no contest" plea if any terms of the agreement are not upheld by the Oregon Department of Corrections, Oregon State Police, the Marion County District Attorney's Office and the State of Oregon.

    "Thanks to SB 1013, Craig Bjork, a convicted serial killer, was allowed to commit murder without consequence," Kemmy said. "It’s not right and It’s not just. In fact, it’s the exact opposite of what justice should be."

    https://eu.statesmanjournal.com/stor...rk/2741389001/
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