Court Case Wrap-up, October 23

We’re starting to track more and more cases of public interest, which can always be viewed here, but it seems to make sense to do ‘wrap-ups’ to give a quick idea of things that have happened recently.

State Court Cases, Civil Cases

This week has been pretty quiet, even though we know there are a number of cases that are still coming up. One new case is Campbell v. City of Portland, a case that appears to be brought forth by a homeless veteran who makes allegations that ‘stalkers’ and ‘criminal civil rights abusers’ are not being arrested as they are supposed to, citing perpetrators associated with Black Lives Matter and anarchists. However, since specific incidents aren’t alleged, and the fact that this didn’t go through the police department, I suspect that it will be dismissed.

State Court Cases, Criminal Cases

This week was actually fairly busy when it comes to criminal cases, with movement on a few cases and a number of cases added to the watch list. In Toese v. Oregon, Judge Dailey revoked Tusitala ‘Tiny’ Toese’s probation and sentenced him to 6 months in jail for numerous violations of his probation. Current jail records show a projected release date of December 21, 2020. Considering his arrest on September 1st, it appears he’s already getting healthy reductions in that time. We’ll continue monitoring this case in the meantime.

The Alan Swinny v. Oregon case also had a good bit of traction this week, with more court sealed motions filed and a denial by Judge Ryan for pre-trial release on recognizance. His lawyers do plan to file a request for a bail reduction from it’s current amount of $534,000, but at this time no hearing has been scheduled.

A few new cases have been added to the list at the same time. Wolfskill v. Oregon and Parker v. Oregon are both cases in Marion County that allegedly stem from assaults that happened relating to a BLM protest in Salem in late September. The Wolfskill case is interesting in that they were cited for Assault 4, but the DA is charging them with Robbery 3, a felony as opposed to a misdemeanor. We’re still waiting for more information into this case.

The last of the new cases added is one of the rare times when a Portland Police officer is actually facing charges for actions taken in the line of duty. In Groshong v. Oregon, the officer, now retired, is facing a litany of charges stemming from running into a looter during the early weeks of the George Floyd protests. The Portland Police Internal Affairs department is investigating, as he was an active officer at the time

Cider Riot

In May of 2019, Joey Gibson and a number of members of Patriot Prayer protested in Portland and then later gathered around Cider Riot where counter-protesters were gathered. The resulting encounter resulted in charges for six Patriot Prayer associated members, four of whom are still awaiting trial. Earlier this week Joey Gibson’s attorney was in court attempting to put the squeeze on the DA to pin down exactly what he did that day that qualified as ‘riot’. Obviously I’m coming to the story very late in the game, but hopefully as time goes I can get up to speed.

Campaign Finance Reform

A number of people sat in on the conference call in the State ex rel. Ofsink v. Mary Hull Caballero, where Alan Kessler pressed the city auditor’s office to explain why they didn’t follow the process the voters and city council laid out for investigating allegations of campaign finance violations. In this case, it was a $150,000 loan the current mayor, Edward ‘Ted’ Wheeler, gave to his campaign. Judge Ryan (the same judge responsible for denying Alan Swinney’s pre-trial release) ordered the city to follow the process for the allegation, and after the election there will likely be more news about the outcome of that investigation.

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Stay tuned to Raindrop Works, where we’ll keep working to bring you in depth analysis of the back end of what happens with these cases and more!