January 19, 2018
T he C olumbia P ress
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Marquis: DA decides not to seek another term
Continued from Page 1
seek re-election and will
leave office in January 2019.
The early announcement is
due to the timing of the May
election. Marquis, 65, decid-
ed against seeking an eighth
term and is throwing his sup-
port behind Chief Deputy DA
Ron Brown.
Marquis was appointed to
his post in 1994 by former
Gov. Barbara Roberts.
It was a time of complete
chaos in the Clatsop County
District Attorney’s Office.
Then-DA Julie Leonhardt
had been indicted in October
1993 on a dozen charges, in-
cluding forgery, tampering
with public records, falsely
accusing two Astoria police
officers of dealing cocaine
and trying to get her fiance’s
reckless driving charges dis-
missed.
Marquis’ career already was
on firm footing by 1994.
He’d earned his law degree
from the University of Ore-
gon, served as deputy district
attorney for Lincoln and Lane
counties and was working as
chief deputy DA in Deschutes
County.
He’d previously been a re-
porter for the legal newspa-
per Los Angeles Daily Jour-
nal and a speech writer for
California Attorney General
John Van de Kamp.
But getting the call from the
governor was both blessing
and curse.
Clatsop County employees
and the County Commission
all supported then-Chief
Deputy DA Cindee Matyas,
now a Clatsop County Circuit
Court Judge.
“It was very difficult for me
when I moved here because
I was a total outsider,” Mar-
quis said. “I was not the em-
ployees’ choice and they had
undergone a tremendous
trauma.”
He assumed he’d have the
place in order within six
months. It was closer to six
years.
“You have to earn people’s
respect,” he said. “In my
business, if I tell people I’m
going to be tough on crime,
there’s this whole subcom-
munity – the media, the po-
lice, the judges -- they want
to see what you’re going to
do.”
Today he is one of the coun-
try’s go-to experts in support
of the death penalty.
He has written articles for
the Los Angeles Times, the
New York Times and dozens
of other publications. He was
co-author of the book “De-
bating the Death Penalty,”
which was cited by U.S. Su-
preme Court Justice Antonin
Scalia.
He was one of four panel-
ists invited to discuss capi-
tal punishment at the New
Yorker Festival in October
2011, appearing with Inno-
cence Project founder Barry
Scheck, crime victim advo-
cate Marc Klaas and death
penalty opponent Danalynn
Recer.
Despite what may seem a
passion, he has only once
asked a jury to use the death
penalty.
That was for the 1998 mur-
der of Dana Bailey on a boat
at the Warrenton Marina.
Clatsop County District Attorney Josh Marquis in his office.
Anthony Scott Garner of Sea-
side stabbed her twice and
then set the boat ablaze.
The cases that make it all
worthwhile?
“It’s often the smaller ones,”
Marquis said.
The conviction of a man in
Lincoln County who got an-
gry with his girlfriend, killed
her two kittens and smeared
their blood all over the walls
of her trailer. “Rarely do I get
as much satisfaction sending
someone to jail as I did him.”
In 1998, it was the man-
slaughter case of a driver on
Highway 26 who was im-
paired by alcohol, methadone
and marijuana. He wiped out
an entire family except for a
10-year-old boy.
Marquis had gone to visit
the boy, now living with his
grandparents, and the boy
began talking about his pet.
“He said, ‘My cat lives in the
house where nobody lives.’
And it hit me, his own home,
his room, his cat – the sheer
enormity of what happened
to him -- hit me.”
The case with the most pro-
found impact on his career
was “the 20-year prosecution
of Randy Guzek.”
Twenty years, he said, be-
cause he made a rash prom-
ise to the victims’ families
that he would handle any
retrials and there have been
plenty over the years. Guzek,
a teenager from Bend, had
murdered Rod and Lois
Houser in their Redmond
home in 1987.
What will Marquis miss the
most?
“Not to sound melodramat-
ic, but standing in the well of
the courtroom. That’s what
we call area in front of the
bench,” he said. “What I have
loved most about being DA in
terms of the job itself is try-
ing cases and actually being
in trial.”
As his office has grown –
from seven employees to 20
today – he’s been forced to
be more of an administrator
than a law officer.
What won’t he miss?
“Preparing budgets or deal-
ing with the bureaucracy of
the state and county.”
The most unpleasant thing
that happened in office was
when county commissioners
voted to take away nearly 25
percent of his salary, which is
largely provided by the state.
“I expect to have to fight
when I go to court … but I
don’t expect to have to fight
over things like simply main-
taining my budget,” he said.
“I’m very conscious that the
money paid to the DA’s Office
is, in fact, taxpayer money.
I treat it way more carefully
than my own money and I
have never gone a dime over
budget.”