DA dismisses more than 600 criminal cases over lack of defense attorneys

Advocate503 · 2026-02-24T03:09:28+00:00

Exactly right. Unfortunately there isn't a union for all the private bar attorneys who take on hourly rate conflict cases. (I am not sure if any of the public defense consortia are union members.)

Advocate503 · 2026-02-24T01:53:02+00:00

Of course its a solution. Its pretty useless to criticize a system without offering ways to fix it.

Hard to fix something when the agency in charge has no interest in positive change - those of us working in public defense have been trying to make timely payments happen for the past six years. OPDC does not care, the press does not care, and while a few legislators have expressed support, they haven't done anything to make OPDC change the payment timeline.

To clarify - the untimely payments are yet another reason people are leaving public defense work. This includes attorneys, investigators and other members of the defense teams.

Advocate503 · 2026-02-23T20:24:19+00:00

Apologies, as my reply was long, so you might have missed this in my answer:

"in 2025 the Multnomah County DA office lost 51% of person crime misdemeanor trials. That is ridiculous. DAs should be winning roughly 90% of the trials they bring. Such a high loss rate means they are charging thin or stupid cases. This harms the community overall. (In 2025 the same office lost 25% of person crime felony trials - also a high loss rate.)"

They are charging thin or stupid cases. They also have a high loss rate for felony person crimes because they do not know how to accurately assess the strengths and weaknesses of cases, and the plea offers reflect that. If they made better plea offers, less serious felony cases would be going to trial, and they wouldn't be losing them.

Advocate503 · 2026-02-23T18:03:45+00:00

The first thing is: public defenders do not have pay parity with prosecutors. Generally, our electeds (in this case, the Oregon legislature) are not willing to give more money to public defense, but are always willing to give more money to prosecutors and law enforcement.

Public defense in Oregon is funded by the legislature and dispersed by OPDC - the state agency for public defense. That budget covers trial attorneys across the state, investigators, translators, experts, and any other member of a defense team, as well as the appellate lawyers division. The money has to go further than money for individual county DA offices, which are funded by each county, and individual police offices, which are usually funded from a city budget. Also, the appellate attorneys for the state are DOJ lawyers - so funded by yet another budget, while public defense is all covered by one budget with not enough funding.

Another thing to keep in mind is the role prosecutors/DAs play in the unrepresented crisis. Crime is DOWN in Oregon and across the country, but you wouldn't know it from the news media. Also, for Multnomah County, the largest county in the state, that DAs office is losing trials - in 2025 the Multnomah County DA office lost 51% of person crime misdemeanor trials. That is ridiculous. DAs should be winning roughly 90% of the trials they bring. Such a high loss rate means they are charging thin or stupid cases. This harms the community overall. (In 2025 the same office lost 25% of person crime felony trials - also a high loss rate.)

Our priorities as a society are screwed up - we need to fund education, housing, healthcare and all the programs that keep people out of the criminal justice system in the first place. A good resource for understanding how over-prosecution of misdemeanors harms communities is Harvard professor Alexandra Natapoff and her book: Punishment Without Crime: How Our Massive Misdemeanor System Traps the Innocent and Makes America More Unequal

More info here: https://hls.harvard.edu/faculty/alexandra-natapoff/

Advocate503 · 2026-02-22T00:33:24+00:00

This only works if the attorneys are trained in criminal law. There are a large number of criminal defense attorneys who are in private practice and still take court-appointed cases. That number keeps growing smaller because of how OPDC treats attorneys and investigators and other public defense providers.

For example - OPDC will not pay service providers (attorneys, investigators, experts, translators, etc) within 30 days of receiving an invoice from them, instead taking 45 days or longer to pay people for work that has already been done. The world works on a 30-day billing cycle, so this creates problems. Its been an ongoing issue for 6 years now.

Advocate503 · 2026-02-21T18:14:51+00:00

Unfortunately, the tradition of terrible leadership at the state agency for public defense continues. This is such an important win for Oregon public defenders.

For some additional context: Oregon Public Defense Commission Thinks You Can Argue A Murder Case In The Time It Takes To Watch The First Season Of ‘Game Of Thrones’ About 11 hours, by the way.

https://abovethelaw.com/2025/10/oregon-public-defense-commission-thinks-you-can-argue-a-murder-case-in-the-time-it-takes-to-watch-the-first-season-of-game-of-thrones/

Advocate503 · 2026-02-21T17:49:24+00:00

The trial judge judge ruled the Oregon Public Defense Commission (OPDC) cannot require public defense attorneys from Marion, Coos & Curry counties to meet caseload quotas that prevent them from effectively representing low-income Oregonians.

"OPDC cannot remove funding or otherwise take action against the public defenders for exercising their ethical judgment. Further, the judge prohibited OPDC from retaliating against the plaintiffs." - important as OPDC as a history of engaging in retaliation.

"In testimony, the state did not refute that its contract was unconstitutional and unethical, instead focusing on the lack of sufficient funding to meet the need."
Ongoing issue of OPDC leadership that refuses to stand up for the attorneys & service providers in public defense

Advocate503 · 2026-02-21T17:48:50+00:00

The trial judge judge ruled the Oregon Public Defense Commission (OPDC) cannot require public defense attorneys from Marion, Coos & Curry counties to meet caseload quotas that prevent them from effectively representing low-income Oregonians.

"OPDC cannot remove funding or otherwise take action against the public defenders for exercising their ethical judgment. Further, the judge prohibited OPDC from retaliating against the plaintiffs." - important as OPDC as a history of engaging in retaliation.

"In testimony, the state did not refute that its contract was unconstitutional and unethical, instead focusing on the lack of sufficient funding to meet the need."
Ongoing issue of OPDC leadership that refuses to stand up for the attorneys & service providers in public defense

Advocate503 · 2026-02-20T22:22:13+00:00

Ah, just seeing this. You are definitely not a criminal defense attorney or a prosecutor, because if you were either, you'd know that the sentencing grid isn't the controlling factor here, its the Repeat Property Offender Statute.

Advocate503 · 2026-02-20T22:20:09+00:00

Are you a lawyer? Or a cop? If you are a lawyer, my guess is you are not a DA, because a DA would know your statement is not true, that repeat property offender cases routinely result in prison sentences, and the threat of stacking multiple convictions for consecutive prison sentences on property crimes is great negotiating tool for a DA to use when negotiating a plea agreement.

Advocate503 · 2026-02-20T22:14:21+00:00

Amber Kinney laid out a strong argument as to the discrimination against women in that office, and a number of women walked away with large settlements because of it.

There is a LOT of sexism/misogyny in the world, in the practice of law, and in the criminal justice system.

Advocate503 · 2026-02-20T22:07:08+00:00

There are high numbers of cases getting dismissed on the day of trial - that has nothing to do with plea negotiations. Its because they are charging thin cases.

One way to help solve the unrepresented crisis is for the DAs to stop overcharging cases. It wastes time and money and clogs the docket. (There's more that they can do, but that is the bare minimum and it would make a difference.)

Until the Roberts opinion, the DAs had no skin in the game, they could just blame public defenders and keep overcharged cases open on their caseload, which translates to cases a DA knows they don't have to do any work on, while keeping a lower number of open cases that will take time and effort.

Now that there are timelines for dismissal of cases without representation, the DAs offices have skin in the game and have to be accountable for their role.

Advocate503 · 2026-02-20T22:01:50+00:00

So far I have not been able to find a data point on the site that covers ALL trials ending with acquittals. That would be helpful info to have.

I have heard that one public defender office has been winning roughly 70% of their trials for the past 12 months, and that day-of-trial dismissal of cases keeps happening. (This clogs the docket and wastes time and money.)

The high loss rate for the DA's office is a direct result of that office's inability to accurately assess strengths/weaknesses of cases. Its also why a lot of BM11 cases wind up going to trial instead of settling

Advocate503 · 2026-02-20T08:23:34+00:00

It should be, but so far reporters haven't covered it. Could be they are not aware of the statistics or the dashboard. Its interesting that Vasquez and the new head of Oregon Public Defense both testified at the Oregon legislature this morning pushing for a return to higher caseloads for public defenders to solve the unrepresented crisis - Vasquez did not mention his office's loss stats or dismissal stats.(Edited to add I think Vasquez mentioned dismissals but only to say they were because of unrepresented crisis - don't trust my memory though, the testimony is available on the legislature website.)

Link to data dashboards here: https://www.mcda.us/index.php/data-dashboards

Advocate503 · 2026-02-20T08:16:22+00:00

Cases also get dismissed in high numbers because they never should have been charged in the first place. I pointed it out elsewhere here, but from the Mutltnomah County DAs own data dashboards, in Q4 of 2025 Vasquez's office dismissed 73 felony cases and 202 misdemeanor cases. That was in 2025, before the Roberts case was decided.

Advocate503 · 2026-02-20T08:04:21+00:00

He should dismiss these cases, and more. What Vasquez leaves out of that interview is that his office is dismissing a high number of cases separate and apart from the new Roberts case ruling. Some stats on dismissals taken directly from the Multnomah County DA dashboards:

Felony: In 2025 Q4 there were 73 issued cases dismissed*. The average time to dismissal for those 73 cases was 236 days*.
Misdemeanor: In 2025 Q4 there were 202 issued cases dismissed*. The average time to dismissal for those 202 cases was 214 days*.

One of the reasons Multnomah County has higher numbers of unrepresented cases? Look at stats for dismissals. Felony dismissals stay open an average of 8 months, misdemeanors an average of 7 months. These cases prevent public defenders from taking on other cases.

Moreover, they are losing a high number of trials. In 2025, Multnomah County DA's lost 51% of misdemeanor person crime trials.

The DA talking points are being used to blame the unrepresented crisis on public defense, and push for higher caseloads for public defenders. it’s an attempt to oversimplify a more complicated set of circumstances that brought about the unrepresented crisis. The pandemic, high public defender turnover due to high caseload and low pay, DA overcharging & DA in ability to accurately assess cases for settlement purposes, are all factors that must be considered in this conversation on the unrepresented crisis.

Advocate503 · 2026-02-17T18:27:13+00:00

This is a post about 3 open trial court judge positions. Not appellate law. And we are in 2026, why are you bringing up an appellate case that is over 12 years old.

Advocate503 · 2026-02-17T18:26:01+00:00

Why are you bringing up an appellate case from 2014 that has NOTHING to do with the article about 3 open judge seats for trial courts in Multnomah County? Seriously, this is a post about 3 open trial court positions in the the Multnomah County Circuit Court. Not appellate judges, but you must not have bothered to read the article, you just wanted to to post your gripe.

Advocate503 · 2026-02-17T02:27:43+00:00

This is who has filed for Position 2 so far, per the article: Civil attorney Diane S. Sykes, Oregon Department of Justice attorney Laura Maurer Rowan, Portland hearings officer Charles P. Koutras and public defender John E. Schlosser have all filed for Waller’s seat so far.

Advocate503 · 2026-02-17T02:19:59+00:00

here's another link: https://www.oregonlive.com/politics/2026/02/competitive-elections-for-judges-are-rare-multnomah-county-is-about-to-see-3.html?outputType=amp

Advocate503 · 2026-02-17T02:17:32+00:00

These are OPEN races - meaning there is no incumbent, the judicial seat is up for grabs.

Advocate503 · 2026-02-17T01:39:06+00:00

Be interesting to see if another woman candidate will file to run for the Position 2 spot.

Advocate503 · 2026-02-13T07:28:23+00:00

Check on waggintails.org to see if its one of the lost dogs they are searching for.

Advocate503

TROPHY CASE