Page 4
May 20, 2020
Racism at Every Step
C ontinued froM f ront
premacy and Christian’s continual
taunts against his victims, people of
color and other minorities, makes
him a danger to society and an ex-
ample of someone who perpetuates
racism in Portland and the nation.
Demetria Hester was a TriMet
passenger who was assaulted by
Christian in a hate crime the night
before his vicious knife attack on a
Max train against three male pas-
sengers. Upset that he escaped the
death penalty because of accommo-
dations for his rights at trial, Hester
said he should get no leniency now
as sentencing approaches.
Christian will face a possible true
life prison term when sentencing
takes place on June 17 and 18 in
Multnomah County Circuit Court,
pending plans to satisfy COVID-19
safety and distancing requirements
for the two-day hearing, court offi-
cials said Monday.
A jury convicted Christian of all
12 charges against him after trial in
February. The charges included the
murders of Taliesin Namkai-Meche,
23, and Ricky Best, 53, and attempt-
ed murder for the serious wounding
of Micah Fletcher, then 21 on May
26, 2017.
He was also found guilty of
hate crimes for threatening to as-
sault Walia Mohamed and Desti-
nee Mangum, two black girls who
were passengers on the train as it
approached the Hollywood Tran-
sit Center in northeast Portland. In
Hester’s case, on the night before
the deadly attacks, he threatened
to assault and kill her as she rode a
TriMet train in north Portland.
In an interview with the Port-
land Observer, Hester, a member of
the African American community,
said she found elements of white
supremacy and accommodations
for Christian’s racist behavior a
constant in all aspects of the case,
from Christian’s continual outbursts
speaking hate and defending First
Phased-in Openings Begin
C ontinued froM f ront
will continue to monitor testing
rates, effectiveness of contact trac-
ing and isolation of the case, hos-
pitalization rates and other metrics
that are required to remain open
during phase one,” Brown said Fri-
day during a news conference. She
hopes schools in the entire state
can reopen in the fall.
The Oregon Supreme Court
Monday stopped a rural judge’s or-
der that would have tossed out all
Amendment rights, to the actions of
TriMet officials, police, prosecutors
and even the judge.
“White supremacy has fed into
this,” Hester said.
She said the first example one
was the night Christian threw a bot-
tle at her when she defended herself
against his racist and deadly threats.
Christian was yelling that he was
a Nazi, that he hated blacks and
Muslims and Jews and was gener-
ally bellowing hate speech. After
enduring that for a few minutes,
Hester was the only one on the train
brave enough to turn around and tell
him to stop.
She said other accommodation
for Christian’s racist behavior came
from the train conductor who was
unable to stop the barrage of as-
saults, even as she screamed for help
behind the conductor’s door and the
emergency call button was pushed.
When Hester got off the train two
stops later at the Rose Quarter, she
used mace to defend herself against
Christian’s continued aggression.
But when a Portland Police officer
responded, she was questioned and
treated like the criminal, she said,
while Christian was left alone to
wash out the mace from his eyes at
a nearby fountain and then given the
time to takeoff as the officer waited
for backup.
If police had arrested him, he
could have been prevented from
going on his deadly crime spree the
next day, Hester said.
The police officer, she said, re-
acted by telling her “to shut up”
and then wrote up a report describ-
ing the bloody attack against her
as a regular assault case, not a hate
crime, she said.
In addition, during the prose-
cution of the case, delays were al-
lowed by the judge to give Christian
added time to mount his defense,
she said. It took three years for the
trial to begin, so long that a law pro-
viding a possible death penalty was
deemed by the judge to be no longer
available, the consequence of a new
law limiting death penalty cases in
Oregon.
Hester also faults Judge Cheryl
Albrecht for allowing defense attor-
neys to assail her own character as
a victim by bringing up to the jury
a felony conviction she had in her
own life. Then Albrecht warned
Hester as a witness in the trial that
she was out of line for speaking to
supporters when the case was in
recess and outside the presence of
the jury, she said. But Hester said
the judge failed to stop Christian’s
outbursts during trial, saying he re-
peatedly made taunts against her in
the courtroom.
Hester said Jeremy Christian es-
poused hate in a murderous way, but
his conduct was also grounded in
the painful history of white suprem-
acy in America where “white men
just think they can get away with it.”
Although Christian won’t get the
death penalty for his crimes, Hester
hopes he does die in prison, possi-
bly from infection or disease.
“I hope he gets COVID, I really
do,” she said.
In the meantime, Hester consid-
ers her own future as a mother and
grandmother in another country,
possibly moving to Africa where
racism against black people is not
the dominant culture.
the statewide coronavirus restric-
tions.
A Baker County Circuit Judge
had ruled earlier Monday that
Brown erred by not seeking the
Legislature’s approval to extend
her stay-at-home orders beyond
a 28-day limit. The opinion now
awaits review by all the high court
justices.
In a statement, Brown praised
the Supreme Court action.
“There are no shortcuts for us to
return to life as it was before this
pandemic. Moving too quickly
could return Oregon to the early
days of this crisis, when we braced
ourselves for hospitals to be over-
filled,” she said.
Officials in Multnomah Coun-
ty, which covers Portland, have
announced plans to hire contact
tracers as required by the state to
reopen. A week earlier Brown re-
ported that Oregon was on track in
meeting the goals that doctors and
public health experts have laid out
She said that means the state has
“the opportunity to begin rebuild-
ing a safe and strong Oregon.
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