A2
THE ASTORIAN • SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 2021
IN BRIEF
County records new virus cases
A GLIMMER
OF COLOR
The Oregon Health Authority reported 11 new corona-
virus cases on Wednesday and ﬁ ve new cases on Tuesday
in Clatsop County.
Since the pandemic began, the county had recorded
2,583 virus cases and 34 deaths as of Wednesday.
Miss Clatsop County winners to
ring bells for charity at Fred Meyer
Miss Clatsop County Scholarship Program title holders
will ring kettle bells to help raise funds for The Salvation
Army at the Warrenton Fred Meyer on Saturday and Sunday.
The Salvation Army helps people overcome poverty,
addiction and economic hardships through a range of
social services. The program provides food, emergency
relief services for disasters and clothing and shelter for
people in need.
To donate online, go to cascade.salvationarmy.org
State holds free ﬁ shing day this weekend
It is free to ﬁ sh, crab or clam in Oregon on Saturday.
The state will not require ﬁ shing licenses or tags.
Other regulations still apply, including closures and
bag limits.
Astoria duplex damaged in ﬁ re
A duplex on Niagara Avenue in Astoria caught ﬁ re on
Tuesday afternoon, displacing residents.
Fireﬁ ghters responded to smoking materials in a garage
that ignited a mattress, causing ﬂ ames to burn the duplex. It
took about 10 minutes for crews to extinguish the ﬁ re.
Oﬃ cials said all occupants — including four adults,
six children and ﬁ ve pets — were not injured.
The renters had insurance and the home is also insured,
the Astoria Fire Department said.
The ﬁ re caused about $5,000 in damage to the fami-
lies’ belongings. The dwelling suﬀ ered about $100,000
in damage.
The American Red Cross is helping the families.
County unemployment rate declined
Clatsop County’s unemployment rate was 5.1% in October.
The seasonally adjusted rate was down from 5.5% in
September and down from 7.3% from October 2020.
The state’s unemployment rate was 4.4% in October,
the Oregon Employment Department reported, compared
to 4.6% nationwide.
Coast Guard to study port access
Astoria is one of several coastal towns where the U.S.
Coast Guard will study port access route measures to
enhance maritime safety.
The study will examine the value of routing measures
— such as traﬃ c separation schemes — and explore new
measures that might be better in terms of dealing with
coastal weather, vessel traﬃ c or other conditions that
aﬀ ect navigation, the Coast Guard said.
People have a chance to take part by submitting feed-
back to the Federal Register. Visit http://www.regula-
tions.gov, and in the search ﬁ eld, enter docket No. USCG-
2021-0345. Then click on “Comment.”
The submission deadline is Jan. 25.
— The Astorian
State Supreme Court dismisses
challenges to new legislative districts
Oregon’s new legislative districts that Democratic
lawmakers passed earlier this fall are here to stay, after
the state Supreme Court on Monday dismissed two chal-
lenges ﬁ led by Republicans.
Majority Democrats passed the districts in a Septem-
ber special session without a single Republican vote. Still,
the 90 new House and Senate districts will protect many
Republican incumbents as well as Democrats. And Repub-
lican legislators did not object as strenuously to these maps
as they did to Democrats’ congressional map, which would
likely add another Oregon Democrat to Congress.
— The Oregonian
Lydia Ely/The Astorian
A rainbow is seen near ships on the Columbia River on Tuesday.
New trial: ‘We’re back at square one’
Continued from Page A1
A trial date has not yet
been set. Sturgell — now
represented by Lane Borg,
the former executive director
of the state Oﬃ ce of Public
Defense Services — is trying
to get his bail reduced.
“We’re back at square
one,” Deputy District Attor-
ney Dawn Buzzard said.
Buzzard prosecuted the
case with attorney Dan-
iel Wendel from the Ore-
gon Department of Jus-
tice. Because of local law
enforcement’s personal ties
to the victim, Wendel led the
prosecution.
Sturgell’s alleged crimes
took place in August 2015.
After drinking with a young
woman at a Warrenton bar
and buying shots for her,
Sturgell, over the course of
the night, gave her cocaine
and had sex with her at his
Naselle, Washington, prop-
erty and in an Astoria hotel.
The jury found that the vic-
tim was too intoxicated to
consent.
Two other individu-
als — an Astoria man and
another Hammond ﬁ sher-
man — were given proba-
tion in connection with the
case. The Astoria man joined
Sturgell in the hotel room
and engaged in sexual activ-
ity with the victim. T he other
ﬁ sherman set up a meeting
between Sturgell and the vic-
tim’s father, at which Sturgell
allegedly oﬀ ered $5,000 in
exchange for dropping the
case and threatened to dam-
age the victim’s reputation.
The reason for Sturgell’s
retrial is that his attorney,
Jason Thompson, of Salem,
did not object when the state
introduced Sturgell’s secu-
rity release agreement from
November 2017 as a trial
exhibit.
The state entered the doc-
ument into evidence because
it named his alleged victim
as someone Sturgell should
not have contact with, prov-
ing that Sturgell thought the
woman might be called as a
witness against him. This in
turn could prove that when
Sturgell oﬀ ered the victim’s
father $5,000, he knew he
was interfering with a poten-
tial witness.
Thompson allowed the
release agreement because it
revealed that Sturgell had put
up $50,000 for bail, bolster-
ing Thompson’s argument
that if Sturgell had really
wanted to bribe a witness,
he had a lot more money on
hand.
But the document also
contained information that
could have prejudiced the
jury against Sturgell, accord-
ing to Judge Burton.
The release agreement
listed a handful of sex abuse
charges that had already been
dismissed. “The jury was not
informed that these charges
had been dismissed or cau-
tioned not to consider them,”
Burton wrote in her ruling .
The
document
said
Sturgell agreed to “appear in
Nov. 24, 2021
mation Service of Asto-
In LAUGHMAN,
Brief:
Nov.
Jon
ria is 27,
in charge of the
Vincent, 64, of Astoria, arrangements.
died
in Astoria. Caldwell’s
Nov. 13, 2021
2021
Luce-Layton Mortuary of
KENT, Rayetta I.,
Astoria
is in charge of the 72, of Knappa, died in
Deaths
arrangements.
Woodland,
Washing-
Continued from Page A1
Nov. 23, MEETINGS
2021
ton. All
PUBLIC
County Crema-
tion & Burial Services
of Vancouver, Washing-
ton, is in charge of the
arrangements.
PUBLIC MEETINGS
MONDAY
Seaside City Council and Planning Commission, 6 p.m.,
joint work session on vacation rentals, City Hall, 989 Broadway.
TUESDAY
Gearhart City Council, 6:30 p.m., work session on council
goals, (electronic meeting).
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ruled in 2020 that nonunani-
mous verdicts are unconstitu-
tional violations of the Sixth
Amendment right to trial by
impartial jury. But the court
held this year that its rul-
ing was not retroactive. State
lawmakers are considering
whether to allow people con-
victed by nonunanimous ver-
dicts in Oregon before the
court ruling to seek relief.
“I ﬁ nd that there is a small
but not inconsequential pos-
sibility that the information in
the release agreement could
have been the factor that
tipped a couple of jurors over
to believing that (Sturgell)
was a dangerous criminal,
and therefore that (the vic-
tim’s) testimony was true,”
Burton wrote. “Which is to
say, I ﬁ nd that admission of
the release agreement had a
tendency to aﬀ ect the result.”
Burton argues that the
same may have been true of
the jury’s unanimous ver-
dicts convicting Sturgell of
bribing and tampering with
a witness — charges based
solely on the word of the vic-
tim’s father — “especially
if the release agreement had
already led some jurors to
believe” the victim, Burton
wrote.
“Again, I ﬁ nd that there
was a tendency to aﬀ ect the
result,” Burton wrote.
Sturgell made other claims
about the ineﬀ ectiveness of
counsel, and several addi-
tional claims for post-con-
viction relief, that Burton
dismissed.
Distillery: Mural pays
homage to city’s extensive
history in ﬁ shing, seafood
DEATHS
FALETTI, Nancy A.,
73, of Warrenton, died
in McMinnville. Ocean
View Funeral & Cre-
Clatsop Circuit Court for all
hearings/appearances in this
and all of my other cases.”
“The jury was not informed
that (Sturgell) had no other
cases,” Burton wrote.
The release agreement
also said Sturgell “will not
possess ﬁ rearms, weapons, or
ammunition,” that he would
be monitored at an inten-
sive level — the highest —
and that his bail was set at
$500,000.
“Thus, the jury was given
a document that made it
appear as if (Sturgell) had
other charges and/or other
cases pending against him,
and that suggested, by the
intensive monitoring, the
weapons restrictions, and the
high bail amount, that he was
a dangerous individual,” Bur-
ton wrote.
The information from
the release agreement that
both the state and Thompson
wanted before the jury could
have been introduced by
some other means, she wrote.
In not objecting to the
state’s use of the release
agreement, Thompson did his
client a disservice, according
to Burton. She wrote that,
had Thompson objected, she
“cannot imagine a trial judge
allowing a jury to see a docu-
ment” that contains so many
elements liable to bias them.
On the sex oﬀ ense
charges, which were based
solely on the testimony of
the victim, the jury rendered
non unanimous verdicts .
The U.S. Supreme Court
Lydia Ely/The Astorian
The distillery is housed in a historic building on the waterfront
and includes a mural and other art featuring the city’s history
in ﬁ shing and seafood.
Fick hopes the combina-
tion of the ﬁ shery and distill-
ery will also be an eﬀ ective
way to educate people about
seafood and the sustainabil-
ity of ﬁ sheries .
“I think it’s going to cre-
ate a lot of opportunities for
education and making peo-
ple aware of the importance
of seafood in their life … and
we can promote our natural
resources a little better,” he
said.
As for the bottles, labels
and overall brand iden-
tity, Fick spent a consider-
able amount of time craft-
ing them to ﬁ t the distinctive
aspects of Astoria.
Inside, Paciﬁ ck Distillers
has a mural and several artis-
tic attributes paying homage
to the city’s extensive his-
tory in ﬁ shing and seafood.
“We want to identify the
past, the present and the
future aspects of what Asto-
ria is about, particularly in
the seafood industry,” Fick
said. “ ... We hope to get a
few people walking through
there, enjoying the seafood,
and understanding the distill-
ing process and our commu-
nity and what we’re about.”
Hotel: Number of items still need to be reviewed by city staﬀ
Continued from Page A1
With Emmons and Son-
patki’s proposed building, the
rules hit a snag.
Emmons and Sonpatki
want to keep the historical
character of the former Par-
agon building intact. They
also want to build a proﬁ table
hotel.
The addition they’ve pro-
posed is wider than the exist-
ing building. Under the
Bridge Vista o verlay codes,
new construction needs to hit
a certain maximum setback
from the road. This setback
requirement brings build-
ings close to the road to cre-
ate a streetscape consistent
with how other commer-
cial buildings are placed in
Uniontown.
To comply, Emmons
would have had to consider
a design that brought those
wider wings of the new addi-
tion up to Marine Drive, on
either side of the building. Or
he could reduce the size of
the addition. The ﬁ rst option
would negate the eﬀ ort to
preserve the Paragon build-
ing. The second option, he
argued, would make for a
much smaller, potentially less
viable hotel.
Hotels are allowed in
this area, planning com-
missioners noted, and they
commended Sonpatki and
Emmons’ desire to preserve
the Paragon building.
Commissioner
Pat
Corcoran said he felt, in this
case, more harm would be
done by meeting the letter
of the law. It seemed, he and
other commissioners agreed,
that the hotel developers
were trying to meet the intent
of the law.
Daryl Moore, the com-
mission’s president, noted
that the Bridge Vista o ver-
lay is challenging to develop
under, but the hotel project
seemed to be considerate to
the needs of that zone.
“There are times when
the intent of the law is more
important than the letter of
the law,” he said.
The hotel has other hur-
dles to clear, including a num-
ber of items that still need to
be reviewed by city staﬀ .