A2
THE ASTORIAN • THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 2022
IN BRIEF
State reports dozens
of virus cases for county
The Oregon Health Authority reported dozens of
new coronavirus cases for Clatsop County over the
past several days.
The health authority reported 18 new virus cases on
Tuesday and 63 new cases over the weekend.
Since the pandemic began, the county had recorded
4,311 virus cases and 38 deaths as of Tuesday.
County saw $22.9 million in state
forest timber revenue last fi scal year
Clatsop County and agencies that provide local ser-
vices received $22.9 million in revenue from timber
sales in fi scal year 2021, a recent Oregon Department
of Forestry report said.
Among the recipients were Clatsop Care Health
District, Clatsop Community College, Jewell School
District, Rural Law Enforcement District and Port of
Astoria, the state forestry department said.
Clatsop is one of 15 counties with forestland man-
aged by the state forestry department and that benefi ts
from the sale of timber harvests.
At 147,000 acres, the Clatsop State Forest is among
the largest forests managed by the state.
Beth Nakamura/The Oregonian
Land conservancy adopts
Cape Falcon program
Gov. Kate Brown has surpassed her predecessors, John Kitzhaber and Ted Kulongoski, in using her broad clemency authority.
The North Coast Land Conservancy has adopted
the Cape Falcon Marine Reserve program, adding
a 20-square mile marine research site off of Oswald
West State Park to its conserved areas.
This is the land conservancy’s fi rst marine site. The
nonprofi t, established in 1985, acquires land through-
out the coast for conservation and habitat stewardship.
Recently, it purchased 3,500 acres of forest adjacent to
Oswald West State Park.
“Bringing on Cape Falcon Marine Reserve as
a new program is a natural next step for our work
in the Coastal Edge and in cultivating a land-to-
sea conservation corridor,” said Katie Voelke, the
executive director of the land conservancy, in a
statement.
The site was previously stewarded by the Friends
of Cape Falcon Marine Reserve, a coalition of non-
profi t organizations and volunteers. The group
will act as an advisory committee within the land
conservancy.
Weber to host update
on legislative session
State Rep. Suzanne Weber, the Tillamook Repub-
lican who represents House District 32, will provide
an update on the legislative session and take questions
during a Facebook Live event held on her Facebook
page at 6:30 p.m. Thursday.
Weber will be presenting from the Oregon State
Capitol. She will be joined by former state Rep. Bill
Post, the Keizer Republican who represented state
House District 25.
— The Astorian
MEMORIAL
Saturday, Feb. 12
Memorial
GROTHE, Rev. Alvin Joseph — Memorial at 11 a.m.,
Bethany Free Lutheran Church, 451 34th St., Astoria
ON THE RECORD
Assaulting a public
Theft
On
the
safety
offi cer Record
• Jonathan
• Tyler Lane Mac-
Dicken, 23, of Astoria,
was arrested on Sun-
day for assaulting a pub-
lic safety offi cer, two
counts of theft in the sec-
ond degree, robbery in
the third degree, crimi-
nal mischief in the third
degree, escape in the sec-
ond degree and resisting
arrest.
Assault
• Cheyenna Dawn
Etier, 30, of Portland,
was arraigned on Mon-
day on charges of assault
in the fourth degree,
interference with making
a report and disorderly
conduct in the second
degree. The crimes are
alleged to have occurred
in Clatsop County earlier
this month.
Blake
Lambert, 35, of Sparks,
Nevada, was arraigned
on Monday on charges of
theft in the fi rst degree.
The crime is alleged to
have occurred in Clatsop
County in November.
• Nicholas Steven
Shelton, 27, of Longview,
Washington, was arrested
on Saturday at Walmart
in Warrenton for theft in
the second degree and
criminal mischief in the
third degree.
DUII
• Glenn Day, 58, of
Milwaukie, was arrested
on Jan. 30 near U.S.
Highway 30 and Nicolai
Road for driving under
the infl uence of intoxi-
cants. He was involved
in
a
single-vehicle
accident.
PUBLIC MEETINGS
THURSDAY
Seaside Civic and Convention Center Commission,
5 p.m., 415 First Ave.
Gearhart Planning Commission, 6 p.m., (electronic meeting).
PUBLIC MEETINGS
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Gov. Brown makes historic
push to release prisoners
Crime victims,
families feel
blindsided
By NOELLE CROMBIE
The Oregonian
Kate Brown in her fi nal
two years in offi ce has
become the busiest governor
in modern Oregon history –
and among the busiest in the
country – to use her power
to grant mercy to criminal
defendants, off ering clem-
ency to 1,204 people so far.
But her decisions to
commute sentences or par-
don people altogether have
often left out crime victims
and their families, creating
a backlash that leaves an
indelible mark on her legacy.
Brown, like other gover-
nors of both parties, released
hundreds of prisoners in
response to the pandemic
and followed up by com-
muting the sentences of 41
men and women who fought
Oregon’s historic wildfi res
in 2020.
She has also commuted
or pardoned dozens of oth-
ers who made personal pleas
for release, some of them
serving decades for crimes
that include murder.
But her controversial call
last year to grant clemency
to 72 people convicted of
crimes as juveniles — and
consider release for about
140 others — blindsided
many still-grieving families
and left to prosecutors the
task of informing them of
Brown’s decision.
The governor’s eff orts
have played out amid a
national discussion about
incarceration and crimi-
nal justice reform. That
debate comes in response
to the legal system’s dispa-
rate treatment of marginal-
ized communities and what
some see as an overempha-
sis on punishment versus
rehabilitation.
People familiar with the
governor’s thinking but
not authorized to speak on
her behalf said her offi ce
fi rst quietly fl oated the idea
of juvenile commutations
early last year. In the fol-
lowing months, the gov-
ernor’s advisers sought to
keep those discussions con-
fi dential. Prosecutors and
victims were not part —
or even aware — of those
discussions.
Now two district attor-
neys and the relatives of
three people killed by teen-
agers have fi led a lawsuit
alleging Brown failed to fol-
low the clemency process as
outlined in state law, which
requires the notifi cation
of the district attorney and
victims.
The suit also claims the
governor improperly dele-
gated her clemency author-
ity to the Oregon Depart-
ment of Corrections by
asking for lists of prisoners
and that she failed to make
case-by-case determinations
as the suit contends she is
required to do.
For Gladys Camber and
many loved ones of those
hurt or killed by the prison-
ers walking free, revisiting
the sentences has resurfaced
their grief and stoked out-
rage over what they say is
the governor’s disregard for
justice meted out long ago.
Camber’s daughter, Brid-
get, and her fi ance, Ian Dahl,
were abducted at gunpoint
in Salem in 1994. They were
tied up, forced into a ditch
and shot to death in rural
Benton County.
Sterling Cunio, then 16,
and an adult accomplice
were convicted of aggra-
vated murder and sentenced
to life in prison.
Last fall, the governor
commuted Cunio’s sentence.
BROWN, LIKE OTHER GOVERNORS
OF BOTH PARTIES, RELEASED
HUNDREDS OF PRISONERS IN
RESPONSE TO THE PANDEMIC AND
FOLLOWED UP BY COMMUTING THE
SENTENCES OF 41 MEN AND WOMEN
WHO FOUGHT OREGON’S HISTORIC
WILDFIRES IN 2020.
“It made me start the
grieving process all over
again knowing he was free,”
Gladys Camber said, “and
they are dead.”
Brown surpasses
Kitzhaber, Kulongoski
At fi rst, Brown was cool to
clemency, state data shows.
She seemed to con-
tinue the pattern established
by her predecessors, John
Kitzhaber, who granted
eight commutations and two
pardons, and Ted Kulon-
goski, who granted 53 com-
mutations and 20 pardons
and said he reserved clem-
ency for “the most extraor-
dinary circumstances.”
Both Kitzhaber and
Brown put a moratorium
on executions during their
terms.
In her fi rst fi ve years in
offi ce, Brown granted 31
commutations and pardons.
That’s in keeping with the
approach of many governors
who, worried about their
political futures, shy away
from using their clemency
authority, said Marta Nel-
son, director of government
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strategy at the Vera Institute
of Justice, a national non-
profi t focused on eliminat-
ing mass incarceration.
“As long as the chief
executive has a political
future in front of them, they
tend not to do it,” she said.
“There is no real upside. The
people who thank them for
it are the family members of
the people who are released
and criminal justice reform
people who also say thank
you but you should do X, Y
and Z.”
Brown, a Democrat, is
not eligible to run for gov-
ernor when her term ends at
the end of this year.
In recent years, criminal
justice reform advocates like
Aliza Kaplan, a professor at
Lewis & Clark Law School,
and the American Civil Lib-
erties Union have pressed
governors to use their clem-
ency authority to signifi -
cantly reduce prison pop-
ulations, reexamine cases
of teenagers prosecuted as
adults and correct racial dis-
parities in the prison system.
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Some governors are
listening.
It’s diffi cult to draw
national comparisons on
clemency because the pro-
cess works diff erently from
state to state, but an analysis
by the American Civil Lib-
erties Union shows Brown
is among a handful of gov-
ernors who have embraced
their broad powers to release
prisoners or at least reevalu-
ate the sentences of groups
of off enders, such as older
prisoners or those with seri-
ous illnesses.
“What we are seeing
is clemency can be much
more than an individual act
of commutation, that it can
be used as a tool to rectify
injustice and rectify prob-
lems that we know are per-
vasive throughout our crim-
inal justice system,” said
Leah Sakala, a senior pol-
icy associate in the Justice
Policy Center at the Urban
Institute, a national nonprofi t
organization that provides
research on economic and
social issues.
North Carolina’s gover-
nor, for instance, established
a panel to review sentences
of juveniles who were pros-
ecuted as adults. In Wiscon-
sin, the governor has used
pardons to give low-level
off enders a clean slate.
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis
granted more than 4,000 par-
dons and commutations
in 2020 and 2021 related
to changes in drug laws,
according to one study.
Robert Ehrlich, a Repub-
lican who served as gover-
nor of Maryland from 2003
through 2007, said he saw
clemency as part of the job.
He reviewed cases on a reg-
ular basis; no off ense was off
limits, he said.
He said his decisions
didn’t generate much push-
back, likely because he said
he “made victims part of the
process from the jump.”
Ehrlich, a lawyer by train-
ing, looked for “things that
didn’t smell right” — maybe
a lousy defense lawyer,
racial bias, something off at
the trial level or during the
appeals process.
“To the extent that you
have this extraordinary
power as chief executive,”
he said, “you can get jus-
tice done. You can actually
achieve justice.”
Two years ago, Kaplan,
arguably among the most
infl uential voices on crimi-
nal justice reform in Oregon,
called on Brown to use her
clemency power to blunt the
impact of Measure 11′s man-
datory minimum sentences.
Clemency is a broad term
that includes commutations,
which represent a reduction
in a person’s sentence. A
commutation can mean the
immediate release of a pris-
oner or it can make someone
eligible to pursue release.
Clemency also applies to
pardons, an act of forgive-
ness for the crime the person
committed. A law passed in
2019, an eff ort championed
by Kaplan, ensures that those
who receive pardons have
their convictions sealed.
Under the Oregon Con-
stitution, the governor can
grant clemency for any
crime except treason.
Kaplan, previously a
national leader in the inno-
cence movement, came to
Portland in 2011 and has suc-
cessfully lobbied to restrict
which crimes are eligible
for the death penalty and
pressed for a law that creates
a legal path for defendants to
revisit their convictions and
sentences even after their
cases are closed.
“The pardon power,”
Kaplan wrote in an aca-
demic paper, “has a far more
substantial role to play in
Oregon’s criminal justice
system.”
In 2020, according to
data provided by the gover-
nor’s offi ce, Brown signifi -
cantly stepped up her pace,
a pattern accelerated in part
by the pandemic.
Kaplan’s
clemency
clinic, based out of Lewis &
Clark, has served as a pipe-
line of sorts for clemency
appeals to Brown, who in an
interview with The Orego-
nian said Kaplan has helped
shape her view of the crimi-
nal justice system in Oregon.
See Prisoners, Page A3