DA Mike Schmidt Says Defendants’ Failure to Appear in Court Doesn’t Invalidate Bail Reform

When we asked challenger Nathan Vasquez to identify policies of Schmidt’s office that made crime worse, the second example he chose was bail reform.

Multnomah County District Attorney Mike Schmidt. (Mick Hangland-Skill)
By Aaron Mesh

Embattled Multnomah County District Attorney Mike Schmidt faces an uphill battle for reelection. One of his challenges is explaining high-profile cases of people committing crimes while awaiting trial.

As WW reported last summer, a bail reform law Schmidt championed in 2022 reduced the use of cash bail, which reformers argued was ineffective and discriminatory. The resulting law allowed judges wide discretion in setting bail amounts, rather than tying the amount to specific charges. In one case WW examined, a prolific downtown fentanyl and cocaine dealer was arrested six times in nine months, as he frequently returned to the same corner and missed several court appearances.

Such stories suggest Multnomah County’s reformed bail system failed to produce its intended result: motivating criminal defendants to appear in court.

That opens the door for Schmidt’s opponent, longtime prosecutor Nathan Vasquez, to attack his boss as someone who has unwittingly abetted the smothering of Portland in blue fentanyl pills.

When we asked Vasquez to identify policies of Schmidt’s office that made crime worse, the second example he chose was bail reform. We then asked Schmidt to defend his reforms—and he pointed to tightened rules on how many times a defendant can fail to appear in court before getting locked up.

Watch the exchange below.

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