Case Explained: State Supreme Court orders immediate release of 3 Oregon prisoners freed then rearrested – Legal Perspective

The Oregon Supreme Court early Wednesday ordered the state corrections department to immediately release two men and one woman who were rearrested and sent back to prison months after the state found they had completed their sentences.

The decision led to an unusual flurry of filings late on Christmas Eve when it appeared the state Department of Corrections intended to delay the trio’s release through the weekend. The Supreme Court judges around 7 p.m. threatened to hold the state in contempt, and the three former inmates were released within an hour, their lawyers confirmed.

The state Supreme Court had ruled that their return to prison was unlawful in a decision that is likely to have broader impact. The three were among at least 17 people who the state corrections department released in August but sent back to prison by late November.

The state corrections department released the prisoners because officials believed they had completed their sentences when factoring in time served in jail.

But the department soon after changed how it interpreted the sentences and launched a sudden roundup, issuing 20 warrants for people in nine counties.

In Wednesday’s unanimous opinion, State Supreme Court Justice Christopher L. Garrett wrote that the state’s rearrest of the three just a few months after the state had set them free rested on a law that applied to escapees or someone who “unlawfully departed” from a prison. The three adults who were sent back to prison had neither escaped nor violated conditions of their release, Garrett wrote.

It “would strain the meaning of ‘unlawful departure’ to apply that term to a scenario where (Department of Corrections) makes a deliberate decision to release a person based on its application of the law to the undisputed facts, and later simply revises its view of the law,” Garrett wrote.

Their rearrests also occurred without any prior notice in violation of their due process rights, the court found.

The Supreme Court ruling was issued at 8:26 a.m Wednesday, with prior notice given to each party the night before to expect a ruling in the morning.

At 10:53 a.m., a lawyer for the state corrections department Wednesday morning informed the attorneys for each of the adults in custody who were ordered to be let free that the state was working to release them that day.

But by 3:04 p.m., Larry Bennett, assistant director for correctional services, indicated that “due to numerous complicating factors related to public safety, legal concerns, medical needs and logistical issues,” the two men and one woman were not likely to be released before Monday, according to court records.

That prompted their lawyers to file emergency motions demanding the state abide by the Supreme Court ruling. The court’s follow-up order at 7:08 p.m. directed the state to file a notice with the court by noon Friday that it had complied with its initial order or explain why it should not be held in contempt.

By 8 p.m., the three state prisoners were released, their lawyers confirmed.

Bobbin Singh, executive director of the Oregon Justice Resource Center that represented two of the three people ordered released, called the state’s delay “profoundly obscene and incredibly offensive” to their clients and the Oregon Supreme Court.

The Oregon Supreme Court “was clear. Immediate release,” he said, and urged state Corrections Director Michael Reese and Gov. Tina Kotek to explain the delays.

“Every moment our clients were in ODOC custody was a continuation of an illegal incarceration. Since the outset of this terrible incident, ODOC’s and Governor Kotek’s treatment of our clients has been inappropriate, dismissive and disturbing, demonstrating a callousness towards the civil rights and liberties of Oregonians,” Singh said in an email.

The governor’s office did not respond to a message seeking comment. Spokespeople for the state Department of Corrections indicated they would issue a statement Wednesday but never did.

Lawyers representing the two men and one woman who were released Wednesday night praised the state Supreme Court ruling. Prosecutors blasted the decision and the state officials’ actions that led up to it and called for a legislative fix.

“Obviously the Supreme Court recognized that the way the Department of Corrections went about this was a vast overreach of their authority,” said attorney Thaddeus Betz, who represented Thomas Allen, one of the men released.

Betz and attorney Julia Yoshimoto, both with the Oregon Justice Resource Center, represented two of the three adults who were returned to prison. Yoshimoto represented Natalia Joanne Hernandez.

Attorney Theo Erde-Wollheim of Metropolitan Public Defenders, who represented Jose Rafael Arellano-Sanchez, said the ruling “ reiterates that the rule of law matters and that the awesome power of the State to imprison people can only be exercised when the rules are followed.”

John Wentworth, the Clackamas County district attorney who serves as president of the Oregon District Attorneys Association, said he believed Wednesday’s Supreme Court decision clarified that dozens of adults in custody should not have been released by the state corrections department last summer but also that the method the state used to return them to prison was not lawful.

“Unfortunately, it is crime victims who suffer the real impact of these errors,” Wentworth said. He urged state officials to “find all legal mechanisms necessary to keep these offenders behind bars for the full duration of their lawfully imposed sentences.”

Jim Ferraris, president of the nonprofit Oregon Criminal Justice Truth Project led by retired prosecutors and law enforcement, issued a separate statement, saying that the public trust in Oregon’s justice system has been “eroded by the very officials charged with upholding it.” The project has filed separate lawsuits on behalf of victims to block the releases of prisoners.

He said the court decision is likely to open the door to dozens of more releases of what he called violent offenders in the coming weeks. He said many of the affected cases involve repeat sex offenders, people convicted of child pornography and killers.

“These releases are not the unavoidable result of a court ruling. They are the product of choices made by the State of Oregon — choices that ignored the clear intent of sentencing courts, sidelined prosecutors, excluded victims, and put public safety at risk,” he said.

He called for Kotek to immediately convene the Legislature “to undo the damage.”

“Anything less is a betrayal of crime victims, a dereliction of duty by state leadership, and a reckless gamble with public safety,” he said.

State Supreme Court Justice Bronson James wrote a concurring opinion joined by Justice Stephen K. Bushong.

James supported the majority ruling but also offered what he called “some practical suggestions” to the state corrections department and trial judges to avoid future problems.

James suggested that judges and lawyers should be cautious about using generic terms like “credit for time served” to avoid any uncertainty and instead be precise in their sentencings by specifying whether time served applies, and for which convicted offenses.

Arrellano-Sanchez, 32, was convicted in 2017 of first-degree robbery, second-degree assault and unlawful use of a weapon. After an appeal, he pleaded guilty to the robbery and the weapons charge and was resentenced to a total of 10 years in 2022. The judge also ordered credit for time served since his November 2016 arrest but also stated that he shall serve the entire 10 years imposed.

Allen, 31, pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree rape in 2013. Six years later, after an appeal, he was resentenced to a total of 15 years in prison, resulting from consecutive sentences on the two counts. The judgment for each count said he was to receive credit for time served back to 2012. Allen was released in August and then rearrested on Nov. 24.

Hernandez, 25, was prosecuted in Marion County for delivery of methamphetamine and first-degree assault with a gun. She pleaded guilty to three counts between two cases and was sentenced to a total of seven years and one month from three consecutive sentences. The state corrections department released her from prison in August and then she turned herself into the Marion County Jail on Nov. 25 after the state ordered her rearrest.

The state informed her that she owed “more time” and was considered an “escaped inmate,” according to her lawyer.

A state correction official, her attorney said in court records, explained the switch as the result of “updated legal advice and guidance from the Governor’s Office.” The corrections department was now applying “a single credit (of time served) across the total sum of combined sentences, rather than applying the same credit to each individual sentence,” according to the court records.

Hernandez was three months pregnant when she was rearrested. At the time, her husband had obtained a new job in Alabama and bought a home there, and she had planned to join him once the transfer of her post-prison supervision was approved, her lawyer wrote in a court filing.

A state Supreme Court ruling this past summer in a different case, which allowed the double counting of credit for time served from different convictions, had prompted the state corrections department to review the prison terms of approximately 11,000 adults in custody, Paul L. Smith, deputy solicitor general, said during oral argument earlier this month before the court.

Until then, the state corrections department had never applied any double counting of credit for time served, except in “super unusual circumstances,” Smith said.

He said the agency “reviewed as rapidly as possible” 11,000 sentence calculations and released people in August based on those recalculations.

But a couple of months later, the state determined it had made those decisions based on “incorrect interpretations,” after an outcry from those outside the agency, Smith told the Supreme Court justices.

“I’m sure this court is aware of, you know, what’s gone on in the media regarding this. The Department of Corrections was made aware of these concerns by local district attorneys, by reporters, by victims. And so, did that prompt the Department of Corrections to reevaluate? Yes, of course it did,’’ he said.

Betz, the attorney for one of the men released, said it appeared the state corrections department, with guidance from the governor’s office, reversed course in the face of “political pushback” from district attorneys and other advocacy groups disturbed by the agency’s sudden release of numerous people from prison without notice to prosecutors or crime victims.

The Oregon District Attorneys Association at the time urged Kotek to order an immediate pause to its implementation of new sentencing formulas until there was “greater clarity and consensus on how it should be applied.”

Ferraris, a retired Woodburn police chief, said that the July Oregon Supreme Court decision that prompted the corrections department to recalculate sentences involved a single defendant and a narrow sentencing issue.

“It did not establish a broad new rule and was not designated as precedent-setting,” he said. “Nothing in the decision required the wholesale recalculation of criminal sentences statewide.”

In its Wednesday opinion, the state Supreme Court did not directly weigh in on whether the three people rearrested were improperly released by the state corrections department in August.

Instead, the justices suggested that the state should rely on trial judges to resolve whether or not the state corrections department accurately interpreted their sentences or not.

District attorneys across the state had filed motions to correct the judgments, but the state corrections department had moved to rearrest people it had released before trial judges could weigh in, according to court records.

Arellano-Sanchez, for example, was arrested by the state on Nov. 24, the day he showed up to court in Washington County for a hearing on a motion filed by the Washington County district attorney’s office seeking to clarify his sentence following his release from prison in August. The district attorney’s office then withdrew the motion as moot.

In a statement Wednesday, Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield gave little indication whether the state would pursue legal means to return released prisoners to custody.

“The Oregon Supreme Court has clarified the law, and we respect the court’s decision,” Rayfield said. “Public safety remains a core responsibility of our office, and we will continue to provide legal counsel that reflects the court’s guidance while supporting a system that is fair, lawful, and focused on community safety.”