The outside of Coffee Creek Correctional Facility in Wilsonville on Friday, Aug. 18, 2023. The facility is Oregon's only women's prison. Oregon lawmakers are working to improve the compensation process for those who have been wrongfully imprisoned. (Ben Botkin/Oregon Capital Chronicle)
Less than a year after a bipartisan bill to streamline the payout process for exonerated Oregonians stalled, Oregon lawmakers are trying their hand at a narrower piece of legislation.
Senate Bill 1515, sponsored by the Senate Judiciary Committee, aims to strengthen a 2022 Oregon law allowing those who have been wrongfully accused of a crime to receive $65,000 for each year of imprisonment and $25,000 additionally for each year of post-release supervision. Most states already have laws ensuring a pathway for wrongfully convicted individuals to receive compensation.
The committee, which heard the bill on Wednesday, had unanimously approved legislation last session seeking to improve that process, but the 2025 effort died in a budgeting committee amid concerns that it could open up the state to increased legal costs. The bill would have allowed those who received clemency from the governor or placement on a “nationally recognized” registry for exonerated individuals to serve as proof of innocence.
The new legislation comes after the state awarded its first two certificates of innocence last year to exonerated Oregonians, a show of progress for a process critics say dragged on in court under former Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum. An amendment discussed on Wednesday drops the ability for a gubernatorial pardon to count as sufficient proof of innocence, a change supporters hope will lower the number of cases and ease fiscal concerns.
“There’s not a whole big bunch of these folks, and it doesn’t happen all the time, but when it does, we need to give them an avenue to have their case reviewed in court,” Thatcher told her colleagues Wednesday. “Exonerees deserve better, and after losing years of their lives, their reputations, their livelihood, their families to unlawful imprisonment, we can do better.”
This year, the bill’s backers have sought to push back on prosecutors who exonerees say have relied upon historically-discredited forensic techniques, such as microscopic hair comparison, bite mark analysis and comparative bullet lead analysis. Around 40% of Oregon’s 43 criminal cases involving an exoneration involve faulty or misleading forensic evidence, according to the National Registry of Exonerations run by researchers at the University of Michigan and University of California, Irvine.
“Oregon courts do not have the ability to review convictions that resulted from these discredited forensic techniques or make determinations about the materiality of those techniques and those convictions,” said Andrew Lauersdorf, a Portland-based attorney who has handled such cases. “As a community, we want our courts to be able to make that review. That’s a matter of common sense.”
The state is involved in several cases dealing with the issue, according to the Oregon Department of Justice. It has paid out more than $7.25 million for 12 petitions in court over wrongful conviction, and as of late January, there were an outstanding 18 complaints that have yet to be resolved, Jenny Hansson, an agency spokesperson, wrote in an email.
Amendments incoming as DAs raise concerns
Lawmakers on Wednesday also heard direct testimony from a familiar face fresh off a victory in court: Philip Scott Cannon. He supported last year’s legislation as well.
Cannon, whose case for redress was finalized in December, received a $925,000 payout from the state and a certificate verifying his innocence after spending 11 years in prison. A jury found him guilty for a 1998 murder in a case that relied on comparative bullet analysis, a methodology of forensics that compares a bullet’s chemicals with ammunition found in a suspect’s possession. The FBI abandoned the technique in 2005, and investigators for the Oregon State Police declined to use it in his case.
“The prosecution went and found someone from Oregon State University to do it instead,” Cannon told lawmakers. “That expert told the jury the bullets from the crime scene matched bullets from my house, told the jury that it was science, and the jurors believed him. They found me guilty of murders I did not commit.”
The new legislation, however, could run into hurdles due to concerns from prosecutors. The Oregon District Attorneys Association does not explicitly oppose the bill “in concept,” John Wentworth, the association’s president and the district attorney of Clackamas County, told lawmakers. But he said his group is pushing for a two-year sunset on the bill to avoid a “costly long-term expansion of collateral and post conviction attacks on convictions which undermine finality in the criminal justice system.”
“Science in criminal cases should be determined by scientists and overseen by courts,” Wentworth told the committee. “If passed, moving forward, what science is sufficiently scientifically reliable would become the subject of this legislative process, rather than controlled by Oregon’s evidence code.”
The proposed bill would prevent courts handling such cases from subpoenaing crime victims unless their testimony is directly relevant to the case. Victims could ask for there to be no personal contact between them and the other party in the case, and they would be allowed to appear by phone or television. They would also be allowed to have an Oregon assistant attorney general or another advocate present during any interview with a petitioner’s attorney.
Should the bill clear the Oregon Legislature and receive Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek’s signature, it would take effect immediately. Upon passage, Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield would have 180 days after receiving a petition for compensation to determine whether it met the bar for redress. If so, he would be directed to not oppose the exoneree’s request or a court judgement in their favor. He would also be required to submit an annual report to legislative committees in both chambers summarizing his determinations on such cases.
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