For the second time, Oregon courts have tossed out the murder conviction of Billy Lee Oatney Jr., who is accused of raping and killing a 34-year-old woman three decades ago.
The long and bumpy case against Oatney hit another major snag Wednesday after the Oregon Court of Appeals reversed Oatney’s 2023 murder conviction in the killing of Susi Larsen and sent the case back to Washington County Circuit Court for a new trial.
Among the issues identified by the court: the prosecutor’s misleading statements to the jury during closing arguments.
The ruling clouds the future of the case against Oatney, now 64, who was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The Washington County District Attorney’s Office issued a statement Wednesday saying prosecutors would confer with the Oregon Department of Justice to consider whether to appeal to the Oregon Supreme Court.
An immunity deal prosecutors struck with Oatney decades ago continues to haunt the case.
“Unfortunately, legal mistakes by the original prosecutor during the first trial nearly 30 years ago have made retrying the case unusually difficult,” the statement reads. “We remain committed to doing everything possible to seek justice for the senseless death of Susi Larsen.”
Authorities say Oatney and Willford Johnston, one of Oatney’s old friends from an earlier prison stint, raped and killed Larsen in 1996.
Larsen vanished that summer after telling friends she was going to see Oatney, an acquaintance, about making jewelry for her wedding. Her body was found two weeks later in a wooded area of Champoeg State Park. Her funeral was held on what would have been her wedding day.
The district attorney at the time, Donald Scott Upham, gave Oatney an extraordinary immunity deal in exchange for disclosing what happened to Larsen while promising not to use the statement against him. Investigators then relayed Oatney’s account to Johnston, who provided his own version of events that implicated Oatney.
Prosecutors proceeded to build a case against Oatney based on Johnston’s statements. Two years later, in 1998, Oatney was convicted of murder and sentenced to death. Seeking to avoid a similar fate, Johnston cut a deal with prosecutors; he pleaded guilty to the crime and received a sentence of life without the possibility of parole. He testified against his old friend, statements that proved central to the state’s case.
Years later, Oatney’s conviction was tossed out by the Court of Appeals. The court ruled that the state had violated Oatney’s immunity deal by using Johnston’s testimony, which stemmed from Oatney’s legally protected statement. In the retrial, Johnston didn’t testify, but Oatney was convicted again.
The appeals court identified two problems. The court said it disagreed with the trial judge who ruled that disclosing Johnston’s murder conviction to jurors would “open the door” to allowing prosecutors to call Johnston as a witness. It also said the prosecutor had knowingly made a false claim to the jury when he stated that Oatney acted “alone” given Johnston’s conviction.
“By emphasizing ‘the noninvolvement’ of Johnston, the state improperly invited the jury to draw an inference it knew to be false—that Johnston was not involved in” Larsen’s death, the court stated.
Oatney’s lawyer, Richard Wolf, said he was pleased the Court of Appeals “recognized that prosecutors are prohibited from arguing knowingly and obviously untrue statements to juries.”
Throughout the 2023 trial, Oatney’s immunity deal meant prosecutors had to work around Johnston and his previous disclosures about Oatney’s role in the killing. They built their case instead on circumstantial evidence, including Larsen’s DNA on the floor of Oatney’s bedroom.
In the initial police investigation, Oatney and Johnston blamed each other for Larsen’s killing. Oatney said Johnston raped Larsen, stole her ATM card and tried to strangle her with a phone cord before suffocating her with a plastic bag. Johnston blamed Oatney, saying his friend had carried out the killing after Larsen refused to have sex with him.
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