Multnomah County prosecutors did not review any of the prisoners considered for clemency in 2021 for fighting the state’s historic wildfires, including the man now identified as the person of interest in the deaths of four women.
The state Department of Corrections sent the Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office the names of 14 eligible prisoners whose cases were prosecuted by the county.
In an email, a corrections official told the office only to provide feedback on cases that raised public safety concerns.
Prosecutors got a week instead of the usual month to review the cases, said Liz Merah, District Attorney Mike Schmidt’s spokesperson. The state did not send along an extensive application typical of clemency cases, she said.
“Given the limited information and the short timeline, we did not have a meaningful opportunity to respond,” Merah said in an email. And so prosecutors did not.
Other big counties did make recommendations. In some cases, then-Gov. Kate Brown overrode their objections. She ended up shaving up to a year off the sentences of 41 people who battled wildfires the previous year.
They included Jesse Calhoun, 38, who law enforcement sources say is the person of interest linked to the suspicious deaths of four women whose bodies were found in remote areas in and near Portland over three months this year.
Brown signed off on Calhoun’s early release, letting him out of Columbia River Correctional Institution in Portland in July 2021 — about a year before his sentence on burglary, stolen car and assaulting a public safety officer convictions was up and 18 months before 22-year-old Kristen Smith, the first of the four women, was first reported missing. Her body was discovered in February in a wooded area of Southeast Portland.
It is unclear whether Multnomah County prosecutors would have signed off on Calhoun’s early release if given more time; Merah declined “to answer this hypothetical in the absence of a full review of all relevant materials.”
The roles that Schmidt and Brown played in Calhoun’s commutation have come under increased scrutiny this week as investigators continue to examine the man’s ties to the deaths of Smith of Gresham, Charity Lynn Perry, 24, of Vancouver, Bridget Leann Ramsay Webster, 31, of Milwaukie and Ashley Real, 22, of Portland.
Police have released no information about how the four died. Calhoun is not charged in any of the cases.
Schmidt’s position on clemency is likely to be front and center in his reelection campaign. Even before Calhoun’s alleged link to the women’s deaths became public, Schmidt’s opponent, Nathan Vasquez, a longtime Multnomah County prosecutor, signaled he would raise the issue during the campaign.
Schmidt, elected in 2020 on a platform of changing the criminal justice system to make it more equitable, has been receptive to revisiting some convictions and sentences and he has supported clemency for people convicted of a range of serious offenses, including murder.
Merah did not respond to a request for an interview with Schmidt.
Aliza Kaplan, a Lewis & Clark Law School professor who Brown said influenced her thinking on criminal justice, said she believes commuting Calhoun’s sentence played no role in the deaths he’s now linked to.
Even without a commutation, Kaplan said, he would have been out of prison by the time Smith turned up missing last December.
“I don’t see how the commutation could lead to this or that Gov. Brown’s decision to commute him has anything to do with this case,” Kaplan said. “Attention should be on law enforcement. It should be on figuring out who committed these crimes.”
During her tenure, Brown embraced her clemency powers, granting pardons and reducing people’s sentences through commutations. By the time she left office early this year, she issued more than 1,000 commutations, most in response to COVID-19.
Monique DeSpain, a lawyer who helped state Rep. Kevin Mannix, R-Salem, with his unsuccessful legal challenge of Brown’s clemency powers, said Calhoun’s early release underscores the pitfalls of granting clemency to groups of prisoners.
Each case, she said, deserves careful review.
“Now with 2020 hindsight we can see that this guy didn’t do enough jail time,” she said. “He was not rehabilitated. Before you release somebody from prison, you should know that person’s history.”
In 2021, the Department of Corrections identified a pool of 164 prisoners who were deployed in the wildfire season the year before who could potentially be considered for commutation.
To qualify, they needed a good record of conduct in custody and a suitable housing plan. State officials said candidates for commutation could not present an “unacceptable safety, security or compliance risk” to the community.
The governor’s parameters included a departure from the previous large-scale COVID-19 commutations; this time, she would consider those who committed violent crimes.
“Please note,” Jon Hansen, a Department of Corrections policy analyst, wrote to DAs, “person-to-person crimes are eligible for this commutation group.”
In some of the state’s larger counties with busy courts, prosecutors provided feedback, public records show. Washington, Clackamas and Marion county prosecutors, for instance, objected to early release in the majority of them, according to prosecutors and public records.
In Washington County, the district attorney objected to granting clemency to 17 out of 19 wildfire commutation candidates, a stance generally consistent with positions the county’s prosecutors took in other clemency cases where Brown sought feedback.
In one of the wildfire cases, prosecutors opposed the early release of a man convicted of assault and failing to perform the duties of a driver, charges stemming from a hit-and-run that seriously injured a motorcyclist. He was sentenced to three years.
“The victim had multiple injuries including a fractured hand that required surgery and permanent disability of her hand,” according to the form prosecutors returned to corrections officials. “Defendant was belligerent and combative with police when found. His BAC was a .16 several hours after the crash.”
Washington County prosecutors also objected to clemency for a man convicted of unlawful use of a weapon, calling him a “significant community safety risk.” The man was serving time for threatening to hit a security guard with a crowbar and striking another person on the head with “a baseball size rock.”
Brown proceeded with commutations for both, trimming a year off each of their sentences.
Washington County District Attorney Kevin Barton in an email to The Oregonian/OregonLive acknowledged that the process included “a quick turnaround time.”
“But it was also a priority for us to make sure we responded appropriately,” he said.
In Clackamas County, a dozen people were identified as potential candidates for wildfire commutations, according to prosecutors there. The office confirmed this week that it registered objections in nine cases.
The objections included one for a man convicted of delivering cocaine. Clackamas County Deputy District Attorney Eriks Berzins noted the man’s suspected ties to a drug overdose.
“An insufficient deterrent for engaging in such conduct is a public safety concern,” Berzins wrote to corrections officials. “More than considerable and sufficient consideration was already given to this defendant in light of mitigating circumstances.”
Brown granted him clemency.
Likewise, Marion County had 18 names of people on the wildfire commutation list, according to District Attorney Paige Clarkson. She said her office objected to all of them.
Brown could not be reached for comment.
Earlier this month, Gov. Tina Kotek, acting on a request from Schmidt, revoked Calhoun’s commutation.
Schmidt wrote that Calhoun had “violated conditions of that conditional and revocable” commutation and that his release “no longer serves the interests of the state of Oregon.”
He is being held at Snake River Correctional Institution in eastern Oregon.
So far, Kotek has received 172 clemency applications, her staff said Thursday.
She has not granted any.
