Oregon law may set trend to resolve murder cases through plea deals

PORTLAND, Ore. (KATU) — Oregon law could be contributing to a trend first highlighted in a prior KATU investigation about murder cases that resolve through plea deals for less serious charges in Multnomah County.

One defense attorney said the trend predates current District Attorney Mike Schmidt.

“For as long as I've been practicing here, the vast majority of murders resolve for manslaughter; that was typical both under Mike Schmidt and under both of his predecessors,” attorney Ryan Scott said.

A prior KATU investigation of court records since January 2020 found at least 40 manslaughter convictions in Multnomah County started as murder cases. Sentences range from 10 to 25 years.

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In that same time frame, there were 20 murder convictions.

The mandatory sentence for Murder II -- one of the most common murder charges in Oregon -- is life with a chance for parole after 25 years. Parole is basically early release. That’s the sentence if you plead guilty or go to trial.

A KATU investigation found it’s different in other states.

Multnomah County Senior Deputy District Attorney Shawn Overstreet said plea deals in Alaska, for example, keep the murder charge in place, and in exchange, the defendant can get a more lenient sentence.

“We have to operate within the law that we have, and that law dictates that we must come outside of the murder statute if we want to give anything other than a life sentence,” Overstreet said.

The plea deals will likely continue in Multnomah County, experts said, because the Oregon and U.S. Constitution say similar defendants in similar cases must be treated the same.

“Defendants who are in the same situation -- usually that means similar charges, similar criminal history -- are supposed to be treated by the DA’s office in the same way,” Scott said.

“Assuming everything is equal, if that person receives an 18-year prison sentence, and then I have that same exact fact pattern present itself very similar, and all other things being equal, I have to be somewhere in that range," Overstreet said. "We have a duty, we have an obligation, to treat people in similarly situated situations the same."

In other words, one plea deal sets a precedent.

Scott said one alternative discussed by defense attorneys is for Oregon to create a new murder charge -- like Murder III -- that allows defendants to plead guilty to murder and receive a more flexible sentence than the mandatory life sentence with parole after 25 years.

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“That way they still get the murder conviction, the person still has to prevail on the parole board in 20 years, but it gives a defendant an incentive that they don't have currently,” Scott said.

Though a murder conviction at trial may be more satisfying for some families, it comes with years of appeals, a possible re-trial, and parole hearings. Scott and the prosecutor said the tradeoff for victims’ families in the plea deal is the certainty. There are no appeals and no re-trials.

“The benefit of a plea offer is that the case is done. It is never coming back. The family never has to think about the defendant again, if they don't want to,” Scott said. “The problem with going to trial even if it's a guilty [verdict] means the family is going to be notified about appeals, about judgments, about post-conviction relief. The case doesn't end for 20 or 30 years.”