A14 The BulleTin • Wednesday, March 10, 2021
U.S. SUPREME COURT
Link
Trump immigration case won’t get hearing
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Associated Press
The Supreme Court won’t weigh in on
the legality of a controversial Trump ad-
ministration immigration policy after an
agreement by the Biden administration
and states and groups challenging it. The
agreement comes amid the Biden admin-
istration’s reconsideration of the so-called
public charge rule.
It’s the latest outgrowth of the Biden
administration’s effort to undo Trump
administration immigration policies. The
new administration recently dismissed
high court appeals over former President
Donald Trump’s effort to deny funding to
so-called sanctuary communities.
The justices, at the administration’s re-
quest, also put off cases they had agreed
to hear over the funding of portions of
the wall along the border with Mexico
and the policy of forcing asylum seekers
to wait in Mexico for their hearings
The high court had in late February
agreed to hear a Trump administration
appeal of a lower court ruling against the
public charge rule. The policy allows the
denial of permanent residency status to
immigrants because of their use of food
stamps, Medicaid, housing vouchers or
other public benefits. On Tuesday, how-
ever, the Biden administration withdrew
the appeal, saying all parties involved
agreed to dismiss the case.
Dean Guernsey/The Bulletin
Travis Barker and Shelley Howell of Augusta, Montana, set up the Ford Creek Guest Ranch booth on Tuesday before the Central Oregon Sports-
men’s Show at the Deschutes County Fair & Expo Center in Redmond.
Show
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In a normal year, the Sports-
men’s Show could see between
6,000 and 7,000 people on a Sat-
urday, he said.
Even though the county will
be moving into moderate risk
under the state guidelines this
week, Carskadon said the com-
pany is not considering moving
Curriculum
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Adopting new curriculum
was pushed to the side.
“All heck broke loose,” said
Skip Offenhauser, who was
Bend-La Pine’s director of
teaching and learning in the
2019-20 school year. “(Curric-
ulum) work completely halted.”
In late fall 2020, Bend-La
Pine’s new curriculum chief,
Juan Cuadros, finally rebooted
the curriculum adoption pro-
cess.
Still, Cuadros said the pro-
cess will take time. The soon-
est new English language arts
materials will be used will be in
September 2022, he said.
“We don’t want to rush
through this process and do it
poorly,” Cuadros said.
When he was hired in July,
Cuadros said he wanted to
bring inclusive learning mate-
rial to Bend-La Pine Schools.
It’s a goal that district leader-
ship has emphasized repeat-
up its threshold.
“Unlike sporting events or
concerts, we can control the
flow of people, and we intend
to,” he said.
The event has also made
other changes like widening
the space of aisles between
exhibits, providing plastic
barriers between booths and
holding about one-third of
the whole event outdoors,
edly in the past few years, es-
pecially after the police killing
of George Floyd in May 2020,
which sparked nationwide ra-
cial justice protests.
This upcoming spring, the
district plans to hold curricu-
lum-focused listening sessions
with groups representing vari-
ous underserved groups in the
Bend community, Cuadros said.
These include the Latino Com-
munity Association, the Restor-
ative Justice & Equity Group
and Father’s Group, a nonprofit
organization primarily consist-
ing of local Black fathers.
Cuadros also expects En-
glish classes to read authors
that are from non-white back-
grounds, like Black writer
James Baldwin or Scott Mom-
aday, who is a member of the
Kiowa tribe from Oklahoma.
These writers’ perspectives
will be compared to those
who are part of the traditional
English canon, such as Walt
Whitman, to see how their dif-
ferent backgrounds influenced
Carskadon said.
“We’re just trying to run
our business and keep people
safe,” he said.
The Sportsmen’s Show and
the county have drawn criti-
cism by some in the commu-
nity after it was announced
the vaccination clinic held at
the fairgrounds would have to
move its operations out to ac-
commodate the show.
their views, Cuadros said.
Even subjects where race or
gender isn’t typically a factor,
like math or science, can still
be taught while keeping vari-
ous cultures in mind, Cuadros
said.
“An equation is an equation,”
he said. “But you can include
mathematical problems from
Egypt, like, how were the pyra-
mids built?”
At the moment, there isn’t a
planned date for fully adopt-
ing new social studies curric-
ulum for elementary and high
school, said Cuadros and Of-
fenhauser — who is now the
executive director of elemen-
tary schools.
Although new middle
school social studies curricu-
lum was adopted in fall 2019,
the other grade levels were
in the middle of that process
when COVID-19 hit, they said.
Now, the district is waiting un-
til the summer or fall to start
again, Offenhauser said.
“This year has brought a lot
Carskadon said he was
sorry that people were upset,
and that this show has had
these dates on the books for
years.
“Nobody ever asked us to
move (the dates); nobody ever
asked us to modify them,”
Carskadon said, referring to
the county.
e e
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of new challenges. Our teach-
ers are really stretched,” he said.
“Once all this ends, and we’re
in a better spot, we’ll have to go
back to where we left off and
resurrect all this.”
Offenhauser and Cuadros
also said the district plans to
soon switch to a new, quicker
curriculum-adoption method.
Traditionally, textbooks and
materials are used for seven
years, before changing to new
editions, Cuadros said. But
Bend-La Pine leaders want to
use the Canvas online learning
platform to create easy-to-up-
date curricula for all subjects.
For example, if another so-
cial justice movement occurs
— like the anti-police brutal-
ity protests from 2020 — and
the textbook doesn’t reference
it, teachers can easily swap in
a relevant film, or article, or
a new textbook, Offenhauser
said.
“It would be very nimble,” he
said. “It’s 21st-century teach-
ing.”
He’s been sentenced four
times, most recently in 2016,
when his life sentence was
amended to include the possi-
bility of parole after 30 years.
Link now has the option of
appealing to the U.S. Supreme
Court, though his former law-
yer, Thaddeus Betz, said it was
highly unlikely the court would
accept the case for review.
Oregon’s Measure 11, passed
in 1995, mandated lengthy
prison terms for certain violent
and sex-related crimes, and for
children to be tried as adults
for some violent and sex-re-
lated crimes.
The Oregon Supreme Court
ruling, which upheld Link’s
2016 sentence, applies to the
25 or so Oregonians who were
minors sentenced as adults for
murder or aggravated mur-
der between 1995 and 2019,
when the Oregon Legislature
softened Measure 11’s juvenile
provisions.
The facts of the Redmond
Five case are essentially this:
In 2001, five Redmond-area
teenagers hatched a plan to
move to Canada and get into
the marijuana business. To get
there, Link and friends Adam
Thomas, Seth Koch, Lucre-
tia Karle and Ashley Sum-
mers, decided to steal Thomas’
mother’s car.
The teens went to her house
near Tumalo and tore it up
searching for car keys. They
prepared the house to ambush
her; the girls filled a syringe
with bleach.
Link left the house as they
waited for Barbara Thomas to
return.
When Barbara Thomas ar-
rived home, Koch and Thomas
beat her in the head with
empty champagne bottles.
Koch, then 15, ultimately killed
her with a hunting rifle.
The “Redmond Five,” as they
came to be known, were ar-
rested at the Canadian border
in Barbara Thomas’ vehicle.
Though Link didn’t phys-
ically take part in the attack,
prosecutors asserted he in-
structed the others on what to
do before he left the house.
Link opted for a trial by
judge, rather than a jury, but
ultimately, Judge Alta Brady
Oscar Gonzalez, an em-
ployee with the Latino Com-
munity Association who works
closely with education issues,
said he was frustrated by some
aspects of Bend-La Pine’s cur-
riculum rollout, like the lack of
a plan to create separate ethnic
studies classes. But he also un-
derstood why the district was
moving at a slower pace.
“Maybe they’re thinking,
they need to walk before they
can run,” Gonzalez said.
Still, Gonzalez said Cuadros
agreed with the state’s char-
acterization of Link as the
mastermind behind Barbara
Thomas’ death.
In 2003, Brady found Link
guilty of aggravated murder
and gave him a sentence of life
in prison without parole.
But over the intervening
years, the trend in criminal jus-
tice has been away from harsh
sentences for children and to-
ward rehabilitation. In 2012,
the U.S. Supreme Court issued
its ruling in Miller v. Alabama,
declaring life sentences with-
out parole unconstitutional for
minors. That, along with other
developments, led to Link being
resentenced in 2016 to life with
parole possible in 30 years.
Oregon has a unique two-
step parole process where in-
mates must first be found to be
“rehabilitated” before they can
make an argument for release.
Advocates for reform call the
process onerous and time-con-
suming.
Link’s appellate lawyers
pushed for a sentence lighter
than life with parole possible in
30 years, citing the U.S. Con-
stitution’s Eighth Amendment
provisions against cruel and
unusual punishment. The Or-
egon Court of Appeals agreed
in 2019, giving him a shot at a
lighter sentence.
Link is today an inmate of
Oregon State Penitentiary in
Salem. Betz, his former lawyer,
calls him a model prisoner.
“Children have a profound
capacity for change,” Betz said.
“It’s quite common for youth-
ful offenders to never get in
trouble again, and I think that’s
what you would have seen
here.”
Koch is an inmate of the Or-
egon State Correctional Insti-
tution in Salem, serving a life
sentence without parole.
The female members of the
group, Karle and Summers,
opted for plea deals and were
assigned 25-year prison sen-
tences. They’re currently in-
carcerated at Coffee Creek
Correctional Institution in
Wilsonville, scheduled for re-
lease in 2026.
Adam Thomas has ended
his appeals and resigned him-
self to a life in prison, accord-
ing to Betz.
e e
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was the right man to reform
Bend-La Pine’s curriculum. It’s
important that local students
learn about cultures other than
their own, he said.
“That way, we can get along
better and appreciate our
differences,” Gonzalez said.
“When you don’t have that re-
lationship and don’t know that
history, that’s when you start
conjuring and theorizing and
coming up with stereotypes.”
e e
Reporter: 541-617-7854,
jhogan@bendbulletin.com