Attorney General Dan Rayfield speaks to the Salem City Club at the Willamette Heritage Center in Salem on Sept. 12, 2025. The Oregon Department of Justice recently decided against asking the U.S. Supreme Court to side with the state in a homicide case against a federal agent. (Photo by Laura Tesler/Oregon Capital Chronicle)
The Oregon Department of Justice won’t pursue an appeal to the nation’s highest court for a homicide case against a federal Drug Enforcement Administration agent that could have tested Democratic-led states’ ability to hold federal agents accountable for excessive force.
Explaining their decision in a press release earlier this month, Marion County District Attorney Paige Clarkson and Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield expressed deep sympathy for the family of 53-year-old Marganne Mary Allen, a state government worker and cyclist in Salem. In 2023, Samuel Landis, a DEA agent, blew past a stop sign in Oregon’s capital city and killed Allen during a non-emergency drug surveillance operation.
Despite pursuing what Rayfield called “extraordinary avenues,” the Oregon Department of Justice was ultimately unable to secure a conviction. Some of Landis’ colleagues had testified that it wasn’t out of the ordinary for DEA agents to skirt traffic laws in their line of work.
Federal agents have significant criminal immunity for conduct within the scope of their duties under an 1890 U.S. Supreme Court precedent involving the U.S. Constitution’s supremacy clause.
Over the past few decades, federal courts have rarely allowed state-led prosecutions of federal agents, and obtaining a conviction has proven to be an uphill battle. While prosecutors first charged Landis in Marion County Circuit Court, his case was eventually removed to federal court, where a district court judge in January 2025 granted him immunity. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that finding in December 2025.
“When the Supreme Court takes up a legal question, its ruling shapes the law for everyone, in every state, for years to come,” Clarkson’s office said in a statement. “After careful consideration, ODOJ concluded that pursuing this case to the Supreme Court carried a real risk of producing a ruling that would make it harder — not easier — to hold people accountable in future cases. ODOJ did not want this tragedy to become the vehicle for that outcome.”
But left unsaid in the duo’s press release were the specific prior commitments and broader stakes of the case facing Rayfield. Since last year, federal immigration agents in Oregon have shot people, smashed car windows, dragged people out of their vehicles, held individuals at gunpoint and conducted operations outside sensitive locations such as schools. In November, the attorney general and three top local prosecutors in the Portland area publicly promised to investigate and pursue charges against federal agents should their conduct persist, though they have yet to publicly announce a criminal case.
Asked whether those factors were influencing Rayfield’s decision, one legal expert said “that is exactly what’s going on here.” While the Salem case appeared to involve an accidental killing, Oregon losing at the Supreme Court could make it more difficult to prosecute deliberate actions by federal agents, such as the fatal January shootings of Minnesota residents and U.S. citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti, according to Norman Williams, a professor of law at Willamette University.
“Is this the right case to try to push the Court to change the law, or would this case perhaps lead the Court to move the law in undesirable ways?” Williams wrote in an email. “As tragic as the cyclist case was – and my heart goes out to the family – this was not the type of factual scenario that would have likely led the Supreme Court to rethink or consider narrowing supremacy clause immunity.”
Oregon lawyers rebutted claims of “absolute” immunity for feds
Pressure facing Oregon’s Department of Justice to deliver criminal charges in the wake of aggressive immigration enforcement across the country also surfaced during the Salem case’s appeal process. Lawyers for Oregon’s Department of Justice in one court filing took a swipe at comments from Vice President JD Vance suggesting in the wake of Good’s killing that federal agents enjoy “absolute” immunity. Vance later backed away from that assertion.
Oregon attorneys also echoed an argument from Rayfield’s November letter, noting that the U.S Constitution’s supremacy clause “does not provide federal officials with carte blanche authority to violate state law with impunity.”
Investigations into those potential violations appear to be ongoing. A spokesperson for the Oregon Department of Justice told the Capital Chronicle in late February that they are investigating several incidents. Among the incidents Rayfield has publicly addressed is the January shooting of two Venezuelan nationals by a U.S. Border Patrol agent in Portland. Rayfield has suggested he will remain tight-lipped about that case until an investigation is complete.
“We always take into account the effect an appeal may have on future cases,” said Marta Hanson, a spokesperson for the Oregon Attorney General’s Office, in a statement. “To date, there have been no referrals of federal agents for criminal prosecution to any DA’s office from Oregon DOJ.”
Another case on Oregon prosecutors’ radar appears to involve an incident near Portland’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility that was captured in court evidence for the successful legal challenge against President Donald Trump’s attempted deployment of the National Guard.
In a March 6 filing, lawyers for the state of Oregon asked a federal judge to modify a protective order on the grounds that the state has a “strong interest in investigating and charging potential crimes, whereas defendants have no legitimate interest in opposing such an investigation.”
In the meantime, however, the choice not to pursue the DEA case has fueled skepticism about states’ ability to push back on the tactics of federal immigration agents. Steve Kennedy, organizing and network director for the People’s Parity Project, a left-leaning national legal advocacy group, described the dynamics as a “one-way ratchet.”
“States that push too far risk locking in even more sweeping protections. States that hold back leave existing precedents intact, and crimes by federal agents unpunished,” he wrote in a Tuesday article for the progressive legal commentary site Balls and Strikes.
He added: “If the mere prospect of the Supreme Court expanding federal immunity deters enforcement of state criminal law, federal agents can operate with increasing confidence that even egregious conduct will never be punished.”
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