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Oregon’s Republican members of Congress sent a letter to Gov. Tina Kotek this morning asking her to review the commutations signed by her predecessor, Kate Brown.
“We urge you to review every single conditional commutation granted by Governor Brown to ensure no one is a victim of the former governor’s reckless leniency,” reads the letter, which is signed by U.S. Reps. Lori Chavez-DeRemer and Cliff Bentz.
The letter cites WW’s report earlier this week that one of those prisoners, Jesse Lee Calhoun, is now suspected of being involved in a series of killings in the Portland area. He was arrested in June for a post-prison supervision violation and was transferred to the Snake River Correctional Institution after his commutation was revoked in July. He has yet to be charged with any of the killings.
Earlier Thursday, WW first reported that Ashley Real, one of the four women Calhoun is now suspected of killing, filed a domestic violence complaint again him in November 2022, according to people familiar with the investigation. Her report could have triggered revocation of his release, sending him back to prison. Real was later found dead May 7 in Clackamas County.
Calhoun was released from prison 11 months early in July 2021 after then-Gov. Kate Brown commuted the sentences of 41 inmates who helped fight the Labor Day 2020 megafires. She had commuted the sentences of more than 1,000 other inmates as well in response to the COVID pandemic.
WW has reviewed the court records of those 41 inmate firefighters whose sentences were commuted and found that 11 were charged with felonies after their release. Two others were charged with misdemeanors.
Brown commuted the sentences of six inmate firefighters with convictions in Multnomah County, the review by WW found, including Calhoun. Four have been accused of committing subsequent felonies.
That rate of recidivism is perhaps not surprising. According to a report released in May by the state’s Criminal Justice Commission, 51% of convicts on post-prison supervision in Oregon are arrested within three years; 35% were convicted of a crime. The recidivism rate has been dropping in recent years, commission director Ken Sanchagrin tells WW. “We are pretty consistent with the rest of the country.”
The commission also issued a report last year focused on recidivism rates among inmates who received clemency from Brown early in the pandemic. That report found 18% were arrested within a year. Those commutations differed from later clemencies because they were all for crimes not against persons, Sanchagrin explains.
Sanchagrin says he hasn’t reviewed the 41 inmate firefighter commutations. He says the commission expects to release a follow-up report on the COVID commutations, a much larger number, in the next few months.