After 17 Years, Two Men Freed In Rape Case When DNA Evidence Points To Other Suspects July 17, 2010
Posted by admin in : Current News , add a commentSeventeen years ago, Alan G. Northrop and Larry W. Davis were led from a Clark County courtroom in shackles, convicted of brutally attacking and raping a woman in La Center, Washington.
Wednesday, they walked out of the courtroom free men, smiling and hugging family members after a judge dismissed their charges, citing new DNA evidence showing they weren’t at the scene and pointing to different assailants.
The dismissal signaled the future, they told reporters in the courthouse lobby. They can now make up for lost time with children, nieces, nephews and friends, and enjoy the simple things in life, such as having a job and going to the grocery store. Their record is completely cleared; they no longer must register as sex offenders.
“It’s just a major relief that it’s over,” Northrop said. “If it wasn’t for the Innocence Project and my friends in prison, I don’t know if I would have gotten through it.”
The DNA reversal didn’t come easy, The Columbian newspaper reported.
It took until 2006 for a Clark County judge to approve the post-conviction DNA testing and until earlier this year for the results to come back, showing a match with two different unknown men. The evidence, taken from the victim’s fingernails and pubic hair, hadn’t been tested back in 1993 because of the lack of technology to test small amounts.
The new testing was performed at the request of the Innocence Project Northwest, which operates in conjunction with the University of Washington School of Law.
Presented with the new evidence on April 21, Clark County Superior Court Judge Diane Woolard vacated the men’s convictions, which still gave prosecutors the option of taking the case to trial again.
At Wednesday’s hearing, prosecutors officially dismissed the charges without prejudice, meaning they could still be refiled should any new evidence be found.
But there’s no sign of that.
“Are we in agreement that the only evidence linking these men to the crime is the victim’s testimony?” Woolard asked Senior Deputy Prosecutor John Fairgrieve.
“Certainly the principal evidence,” Fairgrieve said.
The victim, a then-36-year-old housekeeper cleaning a home, had identified Northrop and Davis as her attackers in 1993, though she was unsure of one of her identifications and initially didn’t identify the other suspect in a photo laydown. She had been blindfolded during the event and got only a glimpse of her attackers.
Fairgrieve said that when reached by telephone last month, the woman said she did not want to take part in a second trial, one of two reasons prosecutors decided to drop charges. The other reason: While prosecutors tried to find other reasons to explain the new DNA evidence such as from the victim’s family or acquaintances, they couldn’t.
Northrop and Davis were convicted by two separate juries of rape, kidnapping and burglary charges and spent 17 years in prison. Davis completed his sentence on Jan. 4; Northrop was released when the judge vacated the convictions.
At hearing’s end, John Pantazis, staff attorney for Innocence Project Northwest, said that while he appreciated that charges were dropped, he was dismayed the prosecutor’s office never acknowledged the men’s innocence nor issued a public apology.
“It is troubling to know the state will not acknowledge that a tragedy took place,” Pantazis said. “Mr. Northrop and Mr. Davis are victims, too.”
When asked by the judge for a response, Fairgrieve said he wished to make no statement. However, in a later interview, Fairgrieve said his position is that there’s not enough evidence to tell if the men are innocent.
“The reason we don’t feel an apology is appropriate is that we feel the cases were prosecuted professionally,” he said. After hearing about the new DNA evidence, “we engaged in a diligent investigation.”
Prosecuting Attorney Art Curtis, who held the elected position when the men were convicted, did not respond to requests for comment.
After the hearing, Northrop and Davis said they didn’t harbor any ill will against the prosecutors who charged them in the Jan. 11, 1993, attack, but they admitted it took them years to say that.
“I could say some things that would be vicious, but I’m not,” Northrop told reporters. “They’ve seen the light. That’s all there is to it.”
“Halfway up the creek it could have gone a different way,” echoed Davis, noting he first went through numbness, shock and anger before letting go. “I’m just glad to be out so I can soar like an eagle.”
Asked what they plan to do next, both men were at a loss for words. Now working at a metal fabricator outlet, Northrop said he planned to spend time with his three children and grandchild. He’s also recently engaged to a high school friend. Davis, 53, has a construction job and lives in Ridgefield.
Making Second Chances Work Conference Website Released July 15, 2010
Posted by admin in : Current News , add a commentThe National Reentry Resource Center, with support from the Bureau of Justice Assistance, U.S. Department of Justice, has launched the Making Second Chances Work conference website. Conference participants and others interested in reentry can view the videotaped sessions with experts and download materials used during the conference on some of the most pressing issues facing the field.
Making Second Chances Work: A Conference for Grantees Committed to Successful Reentry was held May 26-27, in Washington, D.C. It brought together 2009 Second Chance Act grantee representatives. Individuals from state and local governments, community and faith-based organizations, and federally recognized Indian tribes participated in two days of meetings with experts in the fields of housing, employment, mental health and substance abuse treatment, community supervision, and other areas important to people transitioning from prison or jail to the community.
Many sessions focused on grantees making the most of the federal investment in their programs by highlighting accountability issues and key practices such as assessing an individual’s risk for committing future crimes, designing data-driven programs, and effectively allocating the limited resources available for people returning from prisons and jails. Special attention was dedicated to sharing strategies on meeting the distinct needs of youth returning to schools and families from detention in a secure facility in an effort to interrupt the costly cycle of crime and incarceration.
To visit the website, please click here.
The Big Black Hole-Oregon’s Budget Disaster July 13, 2010
Posted by admin in : Current News , add a commentFewer teachers, or fewer prisons? Paying more for health care, or locking fewer people up? The choices are truly that stark for voters in Oregon this year, as this effective op-ed from The Oregonian shows.
Oregon’s in a budget bind. Back in September 2009, Oregon Governor Ted Kulongoski created a Reset Cabinet to review the state’s “unsustainable” costs of providing services to Oregonians. In May, the Reset Cabinet released the “Reset” report, basically telling Oregon to “rethink and refocus our priorities” — or else. While not quite rising to the level of “It’s the end of the world!”, the Reset report is pretty darn grim.
One of the four horsemen of Oregon’s coming budget apocalypse is public safety, which eats up 16% of Oregon’s cash each year. Back in 1994, Oregon voters passed a slew of mandatory minimum laws — and now they’re paying for it, big time:
After years of little growth in prison capacity, tougher sentencing laws for violent criminals enacted by Measure 11 (1994) required the state to build more facilities and hire more staff in order to send more criminals to prison for longer periods of time. This squeezed funding for other programs, even within the public safety area. The Oregon State Police (OSP) suffered staffing reductions from the 1980s through the middle of this decade. Also, in response to the economic downturn experienced in 2002-03, courts were forced to close one day a week.
Still, shares of the public’s tax dollars and the state’s general fund expenditures for public safety programs have increased significantly over the past two decades, primarily because of the construction and operation of new prisons. State prisons housed 5,841 prisoners in 1990, compared to 14,000 today.
So, in short, more mandatory minimums has meant fewer cops and closed courts. How on earth does that increase public safety?
And things are only expected to get worse, according to the report:
In 2008, the voters approved the legislative referral of Measure 57, which increased sentences for persons convicted of repeat property crimes and required drug and alcohol treatment for addicted offenders at high risk of committing new crimes in the future. Portions of this measure were suspended by the legislature in 2009 due to budget constraints, but these provisions are scheduled to come back into effect in 2012.
Oregon’s prison population is expected to increase from 14,000 to 16,000 during the next decade, absent any changes in sentencing laws and practices.
I can hear the naysayers now: “But surely, giving people mandatory minimums has reduced crime — so it’s worth the costs!” The op-ed from The Oregonian doesn’t disagree, but cites this devastating fact:
The Reset report notes that crime is down not just in Oregon, but also in states that haven’t embraced mandatory minimum sentences.
Ouch. Okay, Oregon voters, it’s up to you:
So, are you willing to see more non-violent offenders diverted away from prison and into local programs that emphasize drug and alcohol treatment, rehabilitation and job training? Or are you ready to double down, and vote for longer mandatory sentences for sex offenders and repeat drunk drivers, two measures expected on the November ballot?
Pick your poison, Oregonians. We encourage you to take the route other states have taken, and reject more mandatory minimums. It sounds like your survival depends on it.
CURE Group Helps Friends and Family Of Prison Inmates July 1, 2010
Posted by admin in : Current News , 2 commentsThey gather like this once a month in the living room of a split-level house in Eugene’s south hills: a couple of dozen men and women whose group could pass for just about anything.
Perhaps a meeting of Obsidians, rallying around the host’s chicken lasagna to plan their next Cascade Range hike. Or Friends of the Eugene Library, here to discuss the annual book sale.
A banker. A Realtor. A retired school teacher. Protestants. Catholics. Unitarians. People wearing Birkenstocks. A woman who drives a Lexus. A University of Oregon student who takes the bus.
A typical Eugene mix bound by something that, if they’re not ashamed of, don’t particularly want others to know: Each of them has, or had, a loved one in prison.
A son. A daughter. A grandson. A husband. A father. In one case, an ex-boyfriend. But someone.
One by one, they tell their stories.
There’s the 40-something UO student who gets up at 4 a.m. to catch a train to Salem to see her 23-year-old son at the Oregon Correctional Institution, then arrives back in Eugene at 2 p.m. and studies until midnight.
The newcomer — her son was only recently incarcerated — who breaks down as she talks about feeling overwhelmed. “I’m scared,” she says, triggering a pass of the Kleenex box.
The longtime attendee whose 41-year-old son still has 27 years left on his sentence — and who wonders if she will even be alive when her son is released.
They talk about the logistics of visiting a family member in a correctional facility. The perceived unfairness of Measure 11 — the voter-approved law that requires minimum mandatory sentences for certain felonies. The pain of a son in prison who won’t talk to his parents.
Not the type of stories that are likely to draw sympathy from, say, members of Crime Victims United, but the stuff that binds those in this gathering of CURE — Citizens United for Rehabilitation of Errants.
As the meeting continues, nobody asks what crime someone’s relative has committed; the emphasis is on now, not then. Getting by in the present, not digging up the past. But about a third are connected in some way to someone incarcerated for sex offenses, and the bulk of the rest have loved ones serving time for armed robbery or assault. One is related to a convicted murderer.
For most in the room, there’s a similar unwritten rule for the world beyond the living room, too: Don’t tell anyone that they’re connected to someone in prison.
The reason? Fear. Not only for what harm it may cause them, but for the family member who one day may be trying to make it in the world after being released.
One woman fears it might affect her job if someone knew.
“For those of us with sex offenders, it’s obvious,” says a man. “Who can predict what some vigilante will do? You just don’t know how people will respond — your boss, your neighbors, your relatives.”
As the meeting continues, emotions ratchet deep when a retired man, whose son is now out of prison after serving a two-year sentence for having sex with a minor girl, reads something he recently wrote:
“We relatives of the incarcerated are like phantoms in our moralistic society,” the retiree begins. “We can walk the street, and people don’t know who we are. We come in all colors and sizes and shapes and even ages.
“We don’t have to talk about our affliction. Even our closest friends steer clear of the subject, and we seldom bring it up.
“Tears are often close to the surface. And so are sadness and anger and shame.”
A sniffle here, a wiped tear there.
“During visiting hours at the prison in Salem,” he continues, “we seem like sheep. We wait for the doors to open, we stand in line to be identified and we are all searched with a metal detector, all the while averting our eyes from one another.
“It’s not that we can’t have fun, but there’s something inside. A feeling that we’re different. A dark spot we can’t share or a corner where only we can be.”
This living room, on this May night, is that corner.
Welcome to CURE, an international grass-roots organization founded on the idea that “prisons should be used only for those who absolutely must be incarcerated and that those who are incarcerated should have all of the resources they need to turn their lives around.”
Among other things, the Oregon chapter works with the Oregon Department of Corrections on intake and release orientation. But it’s the monthly gatherings that make it different from other such groups.
“To my knowledge, as opposed to groups like Partnership for Safety and Justice, CURE is the only one that’s an actual support group for people to come together,” says Gretchen Vala, president of the Oregon chapter, which began in 1991.
In Oregon, six monthly meetings are offered (in Beaverton, Portland, Salem, Eugene, Mount Vernon and Medford), meaning only a few hundred of those with connections to the state’s 14,005 prisoners are involved. But if CURE draws only a sliver of those with links to loved ones in prison, the people attending the Eugene meeting see it as a monthly cup of comfort, less a rallying place for lobbying than as sustenance for the soul.
Hugs. Hellos. Dinner. And a time for everyone there to share updates on how they’re doing.
“I was hesitant to go at first, but everyone was so friendly and open about their experiences,” says Larissa Nelson, a 23-year-old recent UO graduate. “The biggest impression I took away was that it’s possible to be supportive of someone who’s being incarcerated for a long time. I talked to a woman whose husband has been in prison longer than I’ve been alive.”
Nelson is an exception. Not only because she’s willing to be identified, but because at a group meeting earlier this month, she was there in support not of a relative but of an ex-boyfriend who made the news recently. Joshua Tel Warner, 23, was sentenced May 12 for his involvement in three bank robberies; earlier, he was featured on the reality show “Deadliest Catch.”
Why bother supporting him? He’s not even a current boyfriend.
Because he has hardly anyone supporting him, she says. “Nobody should have to go through what he’s going through alone.”
Victims of crimes, on the other hand, aren’t apt to be as concerned.
“When somebody steals from you, they take part of your soul and dishonor your soul,” says Philip Johnson of Eugene, whose house was burglarized in 2008 by a young man now serving a nine-year sentence.
If such pain isn’t easily forgiven, it at least helps him imagine the pain of others.
“I may not sympathize with those with loved ones in prisons — feel sorry for them — but I can empathize and try to understand their feelings.”
Even then, Johnson can’t help but see a connection between a parent and a crime committed by that parent’s child. “It’s usually a consequence of how these children were raised,” he says.
That may or may not be true, but CURE attendees bristle at the idea that they are automatically deemed responsible for a loved one’s crime.
“Nobody raises a child to be a criminal,” says a 67-year-old Eugene woman whose 40-year-old son is incarcerated at the Snake River Correctional Institution in Ontario for robbery.
“If you had a son who stuttered, people wouldn’t think the parents were to blame for that,” says a 71-year-old Eugene man whose son served a five-year sentence for bank robbery. “But in the eyes of many, prison is different. The underlying assumption is that I’m not an adequate parent. It’s subtle, but it’s there.”
He’s a retired teacher, his wife a researcher. But in the eyes of others, that doesn’t matter. “If you have a loved one in prison,” he says, “then you must be stupid.”
In June 2005, Juliette Marie McShane, then 23, and Nina Marie Deverell, 26, were given Measure 11 sentences — more than 20 years each — for a horrific attack on a Springfield woman. The 82-year-old victim was clubbed over the head with a wrench, doused in pepper spray, tied up, thrown in a bathtub and sprayed with a fire extinguisher. Also, her house was ransacked and her car stolen.
Judge Lyle Velure told The Register-Guard that once their drugs wore off, he found the two women to be bright, intelligent and pleasant; McShane, ironically, had been studying criminal justice at Lane Community College.
Suddenly, she found herself in prison.
“Most of the women at Coffee Creek (Correctional Facility in Wilsonville) did something stupid like this for drug money,” says McShane’s mother, Marina.
What some forget is that life changes not only for the one in prison, but the family members left behind. As a CURE attendee pointed out, “for every prisoner you have parents and aunts and uncles and sisters and brothers. For every prisoner there might be 25 people out there hurting every … single … day.”
“It feels like a foreign tribe has captured your kid,” says Marina McShane, explaining a prison system she believes leans to the oppressive side. “Guards are essentially police. You roll your eyes the wrong way and you lose privileges.”
Steve Doell of Portland, whose 12-year-old daughter was killed by a stranger in 1992, sees things from a different perspective.
“I have empathy for loved ones of those in prison but you can’t forget what their loved ones have done,” says Doell, president of Crime Victims United of Oregon. “And often the way they describe what happened doesn’t match what the record says happened.”
People closely connected to prisoners, he contends, often downplay the severity of the family member’s crimes. The very name of the support group, he says, suggests a “euphemising” of reality. He’s fine with Citizens United for Rehabilitation part of the group’s name, he says, “But people who murder and rape and commit felony assaults and child sex abuse and armed burglaries — they’re not ‘errants,’ as the name says. They’re criminals.”
The man whose son served a two-year sentence for having sex with a minor girl insists others would “see it differently if it was their child” in prison. In an outside world that isn’t as sure, he and the other CURE attendees clearly believe their loved ones are redeemable.
“I tell my son, ‘You made a mistake, but you’re not a mistake,’” says one mother of a prisoner.
Marina McShane says drugs such as methamphetamines brought out a side of her daughter she’d never seen. Ironically, it was Juliette McShane — the one in prison — who helped her mother put things in perspective when Marina was lamenting the length of her daughter’s sentence.
“‘Mom, if someone did to you what happened to (her victim), wouldn’t the rest of us feel the same way her family feels?”
Retired Lane County District Attorney Doug Harcleroad says groups such as CURE remind people of an oft-missed truth involving incarceration.
“These people are unintended victims but victims just as well,” he said. “Loved ones become victims, definitely. Not in the traditional sense, but they, too, are victims of the perpetrators of the crime.”
They’re also integral, he says, to those released from prison making it in the outside world.
“When they get out, these people who’ve been in prison need a tremendous amount of support and those loved ones provide that support, though, frankly that’s not enough,” says Harcleroad, who is now senior policy advisor for the Oregon Anti-Crime Alliance.
Meanwhile, “those who wait” endure a pain they say few others can relate to.
“Holidays are horrible,” says McShane, whose daughter has 14 more years in prison. “Like death.”
“It’s always there, in the back of your mind,” says the mother of the man in the Snake River facility. “You wake up in the middle of the night and think of it. When I first heard about the Columbine shootings, I thought: ‘Oh, those poor parents (of the shooters). The judgment. The isolation. The blame.”
She’s 67. Her son robbed a bank. He’s had run-ins in prison and lately has been placed in isolation, meaning only one hour out of his cell per day.
She offers a photo of her son as a smiling little boy, then as a young man, modeling a Christmas gift scarf in front of a well-decorated tree.
“I wanted to show you that he’s a real person,” she says.
Not just a prisoner. A number. A throwaway. Things, she said, that might be hard to understand unless you’re that man’s mother.
“Every time you watch some detective show and someone in a prison scene says, ‘Be careful or Bubba over there is gonna be your wife,’ I don’t think that’s funny. That haunts me. My child may be 40 years old but he’s still my child.”
The 71-year-old retired school teacher, whose 27-year-old son completed a five-year prison sentence for robbing a bank, doesn’t find much sympathy outside the CURE meetings. People’s general response, even if unspoken, is, “Well, they deserve it.”
Doell, the Crime Victims United president, wonders if sympathy is always in order. “People will say (a loved one) just ‘made a mistake.’ No, a mistake is when you lock your keys in the car. Now, when someone puts a gun to your head and threatens to kill you if you don’t give him your keys, that’s more than ‘a mistake.’?”
As the May meeting winds up, a grandmother admits she’s concerned about her grandson living with her after he’s released. A mother of an incarcerated man laments how society seems unwilling to really forgive; “you’re a felon for life,” she says, “never mind that you pay your debt in prison.” Others talk of the difficulties ex-prisoners have fitting into society after prison when so few are willing to trust them. (Thirty percent, says Harcleroad, will commit a new felony within three years.)
Finally, a couple at only their second meeting since their son’s incarceration admit they’re struggling. “God promised he wouldn’t give us more than we can handle,” says the woman, fighting back tears. “But I don’t know.”
Oregon Sentencing Reform Plans June 30, 2010
Posted by admin in : Current News , add a comment“The time is now to find more effective and sustainable ways to use the hundreds of millions of dollars we spend on incarceration,” Gov. Ted Kulongoski said Friday as he called for modifying Measure 11, Oregon’s strict voter-approved sentencing law for violent offenders.
“This does not mean that we stop holding criminals accountable, or shorten sentences of violent offenders. I won’t tolerate that, and neither will the citizens of Oregon. But there are actions we can take to reduce some sentences for some offenders without sacrificing public safety, and ways to divert offenders from prison. These options must be explored.”
He also called for a continuing freeze on Measure 57, a voter-approved ballot measure that imposed tougher sentences on repeat property offenders.
To rein in prison spending, Kulongoski and his Reset Cabinet recommend:
-Selectively adjusting Measure 11 sentences “to provide sufficient protection for the public, but lower the overall impact on prison beds.”
-Creating “a modern system of uniform, transparent and proportional sentencing guideline practices that optimizes use of the most expensive resource — prison.”
-Placing an indefinite freeze on prison construction and opening of new prison beds.
-Adopting the federal prison system’s policy of granting 15 percent earned-time sentence reductions for inmates. As proposed, all prison inmates except those serving life sentences would be eligible for these sentence reductions.
-Giving the Department of Corrections temporary authority to allow some offenders to serve the final year of their sentence in home detention.
CLICK HERE TO READ THE REST OF THE ARTICLE
Budget Cuts: Governor Rejected Prison Closures Because He Didn’t Want To Free 1,000 Inmates June 29, 2010
Posted by admin in : Current News , add a commentGov. Ted Kulongoski nixed a budget-cutting plan to close three state prisons because he wasn’t willing to use his power to commute the sentences of hundreds of convicted felons, a spokesman for the governor said Thursday.
“He’s simply not willing to release close to 1,000 inmates,” Rem Nivens said.
Instead, Kulongoski plans to ask the Legislative Emergency Board to tap into a reserve fund to cover the $15.3 million cost of keeping the three prisons open for the rest of the 2009-2011 budget cycle, which ends June 30, 2011, Nivens said.
The governor also will ask the board to allocate more than $3 million to forestall proposed cuts in a community corrections program providing supervision of low-level felons, he said.
The emergency board is made up of legislative leaders and budget writers who deal with budget problems when the Legislature isn’t in session. The state currently has about $50 million set aside in emergency and reserve funds.
Nivens described the planned $18 million “add back” to the Corrections Department budget as “a significant request.”
When Kulongoski will ask the board to approve the spending package hasn’t been determined. “We’re going to discuss with leadership when to make the official request,” Nivens said.
Two weeks ago, Kulongoski ordered across-the-board 9 percent state agency spending cuts to erase a projected $577 million shortfall in the state’s budget.
To meet its $52 million target, the Department of Corrections proposed closing three prisons: Mill Creek Correctional Facility and Santiam Correctional Institution, both in Salem, and the Powder River Correctional Facility in Baker City. Shut-down savings were estimated at $15.3 million.
Prison officials called for closing prisons because they had no other options to save large sums, said Jennifer Black, a Corrections Department spokeswoman.
“To get to that big of a reduction, we needed to close prisons,” Black said, referring to the $52 million amount. “The majority of our budget is in running prisons 24 hours a day. You just can’t get there without that kind of reduction.”
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Graphic Booklet Sent Home With Portland Schoolkids Shocks Parents June 26, 2010
Posted by admin in : Current News , 1 comment so farJoe Alvaro’s 10-year-old son generally knows what sex is.
But the Southeast Portland father wasn’t prepared for the questions from his son after the boy finished classes a week ago at Llewellyn Elementary School. Among them: What’s sodomy?
Turns out the fourth-grader came across the term, as well as descriptions of sexual abuse and other crimes in a 24-page comic-style booklet put together by the Portland Police Bureau and handed out to all the students, kindergarten through fifth grade, at Llewellyn.
The “Operation Safe Summer” brochure, distributed annually through Portland Public Schools to all district schools, mostly includes information about summer programs for children at the Oregon Zoo, Portland Parks and Recreation and other activities.
But this year, the Police Bureau included a new feature on the back page, which shows a buxom female superhero trumpeting “Measure 11 An Oregon Law.” The sheet includes a listing of crimes, such as manslaughter, unlawful sexual penetration and sodomy, that could cause juveniles ages 15 or older to be tried as adults. It also explains some violations, such as “Sexual Abuse 1: You are baby-sitting (sic) or playing with a small child. You have sexual contact with them by touching their penis, vaginal area, or anus, or by making them touch you in those same places. You will go to prison and could be there for 6 years and 3 months.”
Alvaro said his son was confused about what the information and the words meant.
“He wasn’t sure if they were saying he could go to jail about just the whole concept of touching somebody else,” he said. “These are all new concepts for him.”
His ex-wife, Kathleen Kramer, said the inclusion bothered her as well.
“It’s such a controversial thing to even teach sex in schools,” Kramer said. “I’d much rather it be in an educated manner” as opposed to using threatening wording about criminal acts, she said.
Portland police spokeswoman Detective Mary Wheat apologized for the inclusion, saying that the department originally wanted something to inform parents about Measure 11, although the end result went to kids. She did not immediately know how much the brochure cost to produce.
“Sometimes you just have to say we could have done this better,” she said, adding that she understood why parents would be concerned.
It is unclear how many schools distributed the booklets. After parents complained, the school district has since advised principals to recycle the brochures in favor of revised fliers, said Matt Shelby, a Portland Public Schools spokesman.
Shelby said the material does seem inappropriate for younger children. But he said it’s up to the principals of each school about whether and how to distribute it. Because the publication goes out each year, some principals may not have taken a look at the last page, he said.
Steve Powell, the principal for Llewellyn K-5, did not return several phone calls and an e-mail seeking comment.
The district itself does not usually review content that originates from a city agency, Shelby said. “I think we think that … the Police Bureau would understand age-appropriate content.”
But he did add he expects “there will be some follow-up.”
Former Oregon Corrections Officer Files $1 Million Lawsuit June 24, 2010
Posted by admin in : Current News , add a commentA former Oregon corrections officer, recently convicted of assaulting an inmate in 2008, has filed a $1 million lawsuit against the state alleging that he was wrongfully fired from his job at a Salem prison.
Jamin Dumas claims that he was fired from the Oregon State Correctional Institution in 2009 because he raised complaints to prison managers about unsafe working conditions and racial discrimination at OSCI, an 890-inmate medium-security prison in southeast Salem.
The Marion County civil suit says Dumas probably prevented a prison riot in May 2008 when he subdued a defiant inmate who was shouting racial slurs at Dumas, who is black, and nearby black inmates, in a prison housing unit.
The suit alleges that Dumas blocked a punch thrown at him by the inmate, then put the prisoner into a “full nelson” hold and forced him to sit at a desk until a supervising officer arrived. It says Dumas followed proper procedures in defusing a volatile situation.
The suit alleges that prison officials treated Dumas “as though he was guilty of something” and used the incident as “a pretext for terminating him.”
Dumas, a corrections corporal who had worked for the DOC for 19 years, was placed on leave during a state police investigation of the incident. He received a letter March 9, 2009, notifying him that he was being fired. About the same time, prosecutors charged him with official misconduct and second-degree assault, a Measure 11 crime that carries a sentence of five years in prison.
Dumas waived his right to a jury trial. After a two-day bench trial in December, Marion County Circuit Judge Albin Norblad found Dumas guilty of both charges.
At a sentencing hearing in January, Norblad said he remained convinced that Dumas assaulted the prisoner, breaking his collarbone.
“You kind of broke and did the wrong thing,” he told Dumas.
However, Norblad said the wrongdoing fell short of the punishment called for by Measure 11.
“This case is not one that belongs in Measure 11,” he said. “Measure 11 is not in proportion to what he did.”
In deviating from Measure 11, Norblad sentenced Dumas to two years probation.
The civil suit says that Norblad “relied upon the testimony of the inmate in concluding that plaintiff had lost his temper at being called ‘nigger’ and attacked the inmate.”
It asserts that the judge, in finding Dumas guilty, rejected the testimony of experts “who stated that plaintiff’s actions were not only wholly appropriate under the circumstances but that plaintiff followed his training in dealing with this situation.”
The suit portrays Dumas as an outspoken whistleblower who was unjustly fired.
It asserts that he “had gone to management many times regarding the racially hostile working environment” at OSCI.
“This hostility was not limited to DOC employees but extended to black inmates who were treated in a discriminatory manner as to rule enforcement and basic civility, as well as being routinely passed up for jobs inside the institution,” it says.
During his prison employment, Dumas was victimized two times by inmate assaults, according to the suit. It says he complained to management “several times about the unsafe practice of having one officer run a housing unit” occupied by more than 100 inmates.
The suit maintains that Dumas raised complaints again at a meeting about two weeks before the May 2008 incident, citing unsafe working conditions, failure to hire and promote black employees and the refusal of prison management to take action.
It says prison managers fired him “at least in part due to his race and his complaints of racial discrimination.
“Plaintiff further contends that his running for union office, where he would have been a more vocal advocate of racial equality, was a factor in DOC’s actions against him and specifically in his termination.”
As a result of being fired, the suit says, Dumas has suffered severe mental and emotional distress, as well as insomnia, depression, feelings of isolation and symptoms of physical illness.
Dumas was 60 when he was fired, according to the suit.
“The action of the DOC in terminating plaintiff, taking away his ability to support his family, in an economic climate which provides limited employment opportunities to a man of plaintiff’s age, is especially heinous,” it says.
Jennifer Black, a DOC spokeswoman, declined to comment on the suit.
“The Department of Corrections does not comment on pending litigation,” she said.
National Call-in Day June 23, 2010
Posted by admin in : Current News , add a commentIf you haven’t made your call as part of the national call-in day for S, 714, the National Criminal Justice Commission Act, the only person you need to call is Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), (202) 224-3135.
Why? Because Majority Leader Reid and Senator Durbin heard FAMM members loud and clear! We’ve heard that they got the message and know you support S. 714, the National Criminal Justice Commission Act. Way to go! If you have already made your calls, thank you!
Again, if you haven’t made any calls yet, the only person you need to call is Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), (202) 224-3135.
MESSAGE:
I am calling to ask the Senator to cosponsor and support immediate Senate passage of S. 714, the National Criminal Justice Commission Act, because:
* Thousands of offenders receive lengthy mandatory terms in federal prison. These sentences have driven an increase in incarceration, stretching our prisons beyond their limits.
* The current incarceration rate comes at a high cost to taxpayers, families and communities.
* The proposed commission would review the criminal justice system, identify programs and policies that promote public safety, and urge reform of policies and practices that aren’t working.
* The result will be a more effective and just criminal justice system.
* Thank you!
Prisons Closures, Elderly Aid Cut-Off Top List Of Proposed Oregon Budget Cuts June 9, 2010
Posted by admin in : Current News , 1 comment so farAmong the proposed budget cuts released today are possible closure of three minimum-security prisons.
Three Oregon prisons would close and about 1,000 minimum-security prisoners would be let go, under a proposed set of state budget cuts released this morning.
Also on the chopping block: Oregon Project Independence, which helps seniors stay out of nursing homes by providing them in-home care; a state program that delivers meals to 240 seniors and people with disabilities; and a program that subsidizes daycare costs for low-income parents, affecting about 5,000 people.
These are among the options outlined by state agencies, who have been ordered by Gov. Ted Kulongoski to slice 9 percent from the final 12 months of their two-year budgets. Kulongoski ordered the cuts after state economists projected a $577 million shortfall in the 2009-11 budget.
If the scenarios of freed prisoners and abandoned elderly seem familiar that’s because they are. Similar proposals have been made in recent years as state revenues continue to plummet.
It’s unclear at this point whether this time the cuts will stick, or if Kulongoski or the Legislature will find another method for balancing the budget. For example, closing prisons requires either legislative action or special commutation of inmates by the governor.
“The governor received these plans at the same time the public did,” said his spokeswoman Anna Richter Taylor.
In a news release, Kulongoski called the list of cuts, which have come from every agency, “the next step in this difficult process” of rebalancing the current budget. “There are no good answers and no easy solutions.”
Also unclear early is how many state workers face layoffs under the proposed list of cutbacks. Many agencies, such as the state police, are leaving positions unfilled, but not issuing pink slips. State police would delay hiring 24 recruits, which also will postpone its goal of providing 24-hour patrols on state highways.
In other agencies, layoffs are unavoidable. School districts, which must find $250 million in cost savings, already have announced some layoffs and shortened school years.
Kulongoski and other state leaders continue to hold out hope of a federal bailout. Congress is considering two measures that could provide hundreds of millions of dollars to public schools and health programs.
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