Federal Appeals Court Engineered ‘Judicial Jailbreak’ by Approving Mass Release of Criminal Defendants: Dissenting Judge
The judges on the three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit, which encompasses the western U.S., traded barbs about the implications of the ruling.
A federal appeals judge accused his colleagues of approving a “judicial jailbreak” after they affirmed a lower court’s order compelling Oregon to release criminal defendants from jail. The lower court held that Oregon violated the defendants’ Sixth Amendment right to counsel by failing to appoint counsel in a timely fashion.
The order requires Oregon to provide counsel to indigent defendants’ within seven days of their initial court appearance or, failing that, to release the defendants pending trial. The order does not prevent Oregon from prosecuting the released criminal defendants, nor does it apply to defendants charged with murder.
Oregon judges overseeing the releases may impose community control conditions like electronic monitoring.
The lower court issued the order after finding that the defendants’ lack of counsel and ongoing incarceration denied them an opportunity to prepare for critical trial stages, causing them to suffer ongoing irreparable harm. The two-judge appeals court majority concurred.
The dissenting judge, however, wrote that the majority’s holding was unmoored from precedent and that the lower court failed to fully consider the public safety implications of its decision, which amounted to a “judicial jailbreak.”
The dissenting judge listed the extensive criminal backgrounds of the criminal defendants and their pending charges:
First there is Petitioner Richard Owens, Jr., who has been convicted of two felonies—one for prior assault with a firearm. Mr. Owens’s current detention stems from a June 2023 incident, when he allegedly sped his vehicle down the road and in front of an eight-year-old’s birthday party. When victims yelled at him to slow down, he got out of his car, pulled out a gun, told the victims to “[f]uck around and find out,” and fired the gun into the air after speeding off.
Tyrik Dawkins . . . has two prior drug-trafficking felony convictions, a contempt-of-court conviction from Pennsylvania, a prior domestic-violence arrest from Washington, and at least three restraining orders filed since 2020 by women whom he allegedly physically abused, sexually assaulted, or threatened to murder. What brings Mr. Dawkins to the Washington County jail? Four counts of rape in the first degree, four counts of sexual abuse in the first degree, and two counts of kidnapping in the first degree
We have also Petitioner Leon Polaski, who is accused of strangling his girlfriend during an argument and then fleeing Oregon to avoid prosecution; Petitioner Joshua James Richards, who allegedly assaulted a police officer and who had already missed mandatory check-ins with Oregon’s pretrial-release services; and lead Petitioner Walter Betschart, who was arrested for violating the terms of his previous release agreement and for violating his stalking order against his neighbor. Next to these defendants, Petitioner Timothy Wilson’s two counts of public indecency seem banal.
The majority countered that the exemption for those charged with murder, coupled with the allowance for community control conditions, addressed the dissenter’s concerns. The majority also took the dissenter to task for alleged misrepresentations of Sixth Amendment precedent.
This case arose after the state capped the number of clients a public defender could take simultaneously. Coupled with low pay for private attorneys accepting an appointment to represent criminal defendants, this resulted in a shortage of attorneys available to represent indigent criminal defendants.
In one case, an unrepresented defendant denied release at a bail hearing spent nearly a year in jail awaiting trial. This lengthy detention occurred despite the presiding judge agreeing with the defendant that failure to appoint him counsel violated the Sixth Amendment.
Affected criminal defendants argued the absence of counsel for extended periods violated the Sixth Amendment’s right to counsel, especially in light of Gideon v. Wainwright (1963). In Gideon, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the Sixth Amendment requires the government to provide counsel to those who lack the means to hire an attorney.
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Comments
While the judicial construction of a burden to require free attorneys be provided for the indigent exists then the State needs to figure out funding to meet its requirements to provide counsel to indigent defendants. Of course many of these indigent defendants are drug addled Cray Cray ‘homeless’ who flock to deep blue west coast areas with generous social policies. The State could always amend the those policies that act as a magnet.
If the problem with late council is difficulty preparing for the next legal steps – in what way is throwing them out on the streets and proceeding anyway remedying the difficulty in preparing for the next legal steps?
If you wanted to excuse your plan to just throw them back on the streets, you should have gone with something like “delays in recieving council led to extended pre-trial detention… etc” Unless, of course, the data didn’t back that up?
The Ninth Circus really needs a housecleaning.
SC precedent requires the state to provide attorney representation under Gideon. Thus the is holding is likely correct based on existing precedent.
The remedy is to cut the red tape and the delay in having a timely trial – ie speedy trial so that they are convicted and sentenced in a timely fashion. There is no legitimate reason that a trial for the vast majority of crimes has to take longer than 3-6 months.
Compare the crimes committed by those listed by the dissent to the crime of trespass by elderly people on January 6th. There is no moral, legal or rational basis for the real bad guys getting out prior to the January 6th prisoners. many of whom have waited over 3 years for a trial.
Liberals favor criminals.
Very true, but, the words “liberal” or “progressive” require quotation marks. These reprobates are totalitarians and regressives who represents the rotten antithesis of classical liberalism.
Implicit in all this is that, in any event, the right to a speedy trial is as dead as a doornail A merely quaint anachronism
Good thing these guys don’t control the territory where the DC Gulag is located, or else there would be some pretty pissed Democrat fedpols.
I endorse the 6A — people accused of a crime need access to counsel and they need it from the beginning of the proceedings against them.
Society has decided (and you won’t reverse this) that indigent people should have counsel provided by the state. The 9th Circuit just said, if you’re obligated to do it then you have to do it, or else.
The proper response is for the state to meet its obligations. Much like everything else the state has to do, it’s expensive, and there’s the rub. The governor and legislature would rather wring their hands, make pious utterances, and then proclaim another pride month rather than solve the problem.
Petitioner Richard Owens, Jr owns, at a minimum, a car and a gun, as he used them in the crime(s) he is accused of. Either one (or both) of which he could sell to pay for his legal defense. I have difficulty understanding how he is considered indigent.
Richards appears to be charged with violating his bail and Betschartheir his parole. Which to me implies that they had lawyers at some recent point. What happened to them? Because if you fire your attorney or don’t accept the one being offered to you their timely replacement would appear to be your problem, not the state’s.
When I had a DUI case 9 years ago, I got a lawyer right away. At the preliminary hearing, the judge went through the entire docket of cases for that week and made sure everyone had a lawyer – including defendants who had to appear on video from jail. That is the state’s responsibility.
Typical deep thinking from morons in black robes, the dissenting judge excepted: state officials fall down on the job and the people get punished when the idiotic decision releases depraved criminals. How about real logic instead? Punish the lax officials, prosecute the criminals, and don’t release them to plague innocent citizens.
Until the defendants have a trial they aren’t ‘criminals’ as they haven’t been convicted of the crime. Our system presumes innocence until proven guilty which is another burden for the State.
Totally agree that the incompetent big govt elected officials and bureaucrats who made the choices in what to spend taxpayer dollars upon are to blame. They should face real consequences for the end result of their decisions about spending priorities: the intentional deprivation of the Constitutional rights of defendants.
But they will all be found to have some type of immunity.
It’s good ta be da king.
Probably so which is why a more commons sense application of qualified immunity/privilege is needed. If the end result of a straightforward policy is deprivation of Constitutional rights then we mist hold either the agent of the State or the Policymakers for State accountable. Here the entirely predictable result of refusing to adequately fund public defenders resulted in an impermissible denial and or delay for representation for indigent defendants.
That was a deliberate policy choice and it should carry deliberate consequences. If legislators, bureaucrats and other public employees find the risk of accountability to be intolerable they can always resign and find a private sector job ….assuming they are qualified for something else in the real world of competitive markets.
I’m having trouble understanding how the solution has anything whatever to do with the problem. The allegedly irreparable harm of languishing in jail, would, in most cases. happen anyway once the lawyer was appointed and a trial (or more likely, a plea deal) took place.
And how does artificially engineering a higher crime rate help anyone?
Release them, as they are leaving the court, arrest them again. recharge, no bail.
I’ll go one further. When the trillion dollar might of the government engages in lawfare, the defendant can be punished solely by financial ruin. Who really is “poor” against the State? Even Trump.
Citizen and public safety aren’t even an afterthought, where the vile and callous Dhimmi-crats are concerned — they are a nullity.
The desires of criminal sociopaths and illegal aliens are the foremost priorities, for the Dhimmi-crats.