Proposed legislation backed by the American Civil Liberties Union would require district attorneys in Oregon to have formal written policies to guide their work. But some prosecutors and defense attorneys are worried about adding another layer of complexity to an already complex justice system and the effect that taking a cookie-cutter approach would have on
Jabbar Collins spent 16 years in prison before it was discovered that detectives had pressured the main witness against him to lie about Mr. Collins’s role in the 1994 murder of a rabbi. The Brooklyn district attorney’s office knew the detectives had pressured the witness but never informed the defense, court papers said. A federal
District attorneys and their prosecutors are the most powerful actors in the criminal justice system. How they go about their job can fundamentally impact people’s lives for better or for worse. DAs and their staff are making choices on a daily basis about who they charge, the severity and number of charges, who gets access
The American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon is pushing the state’s district attorneys to be more transparent about how their offices operate. Some local district attorneys expressed concerns that could mean a one-size-fits-all approach that won’t work in rural Oregon. The state’s ACLU branch on Tuesday morning issued the 41-page “A Peek Behind the Curtain:
Oregon’s district attorneys have long been at odds with left-leaning lawmakers and criminal justice reform advocates in Salem. But nothing has inflamed hostilities like a recent newspaper op-ed by a former DA who compared property theft to sexual harassment and assault. Recently retired Clatsop County DA Joshua Marquis wrote an op-ed for the Portland Tribune
Multnomah County District Attorney Rod Underhill said this week that his office “made mistakes” by prosecuting some mentally ill homeless people accused of low-level crimes, and pledged to instate policies that “roll back the punitive sanctions” employed at times by his agency. In an interview Tuesday at his office in the county courthouse, Underhill said
Multnomah County prosecutors have been breaking an Oregon law for decades. After questions raised by a public defender and WW, they pledged to abandon the illegal practice. District attorneys are required by state law to file a record with the court whenever a grand jury dismisses a felony charge. Before such a case can go
The Oregon Supreme Court handed criminal justice reform advocates a victory Thursday—and potentially saved the state from having to build a new prison. In 2017, the Oregon State Legislature passed a law that eased sentencing rules around property theft. By shortening the length of sentences for those convicted of theft, the bill aimed to help
Oregon’s pattern of cycling homeless mentally ill people through county jails and the state psychiatric hospital is expensive and ineffective. But the problem is not intractable, say the police, prosecutors, judges, public defenders and legislators who play key roles in driving that cycle. And those officials are hungry for solutions. So are advocates for the
Starting in July, district attorneys in all 36 Oregon counties will be charged with making sure that most grand jury proceedings are recorded. Those recordings will be available, not to the general public, but to defendants whose lawyers will be able to use them in court. That’s good news. For now, only Deschutes, Jackson and