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The Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office says through a spokeswoman it was not given a “meaningful opportunity” to determine whether to support the commuted sentence of Jesse Lee Calhoun, who is now suspected in the subsequent deaths of four Portland-area women. The DA’s office did not take a position on releasing Calhoun in July 2021.
In March 2021, then-Gov. Kate Brown asked the Oregon Department of Corrections to create a list of inmates who had a record of good behavior and had helped fight the prior year’s wildfires, in order to shorten their prison stays. The DOC then sent a list of 14 inmates, including Calhoun, to the Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office “with a one-week deadline to return any specific community safety concerns related to the crime of conviction,” DA’s spokeswoman Liz Merah tells WW. (Forty-one inmate firefighters in all were released statewide.)
In typical clemency cases, the DA’s office is given 30 days to reach out to victims and decide whether to lend its support. The office is also typically provided with a packet of information that includes an application from the inmate, prison records, and any letters of support.
But no packet was provided in any of the 14 cases referred to the Multnomah County DA. “Given the limited information and the short timeline, we did not have a meaningful opportunity to respond,” Merah says.
Merah said she didn’t believe the Multnomah County DA had objected to commuting the sentences of any of the 14 inmate firefighters, although the office was conducting a review of its records. “If our collective memory is correct, we did not take a position on those,” she said.
In contrast, the Washington County District Attorney’s Office objected to 17 of the 19 proposed commutations submitted to it by the DOC, according to emails reviewed by WW.
The governor’s office says it wasn’t involved in the appraisal process, either. “The Department of Corrections did all of the vetting to determine whether individual firefighters met the requirements for early release,” office staff said in an email.
Amber Campbell, a spokeswoman for the DOC, confirmed to WW “no concerns were raised regarding any of the firefighter commutations” by the Multnomah County DA’s Office. She also noted that the office “did not request an extension” to more closely examine the inmates under consideration. MCDA did not immediately offer an explanation for why it did not.
Calhoun’s most recent convictions came in November 2019, when he pleaded guilty in separate cases to a raft of felonies, including burglary, unauthorized possession of a stolen vehicle, and injuring a police officer and a police dog when they attempted to arrest him. Those convictions earned Calhoun four concurrent sentences, the longest of which was 50 months, which included the nearly nine months he’d already served.
Calhoun’s original projected release date was June 30, 2022, the DOC says. But after the governor commuted his sentence, he was released 11 months early, in July 2021.
The commutation was conditional, meaning that the governor’s office could send him back to prison if Calhoun failed to abide by its terms. “Jesse Lee Calhoun shall not violate any state or federal law,” reads his clemency letter obtained by WW.
In October 2022, Calhoun was caught driving with a suspended or revoked license, and later convicted of breaking that law after he failed to appear in court. (It’s a violation that carries a $445 fine.) It’s unclear if the governor’s office was aware of the traffic stop or the conviction. If it was, the notification likely didn’t come from the Multnomah County DA. “Driving violations are not referred to our office,” Merah says.
It’s not clear if the clemency played any role in the killings of which Calhoun is now suspected. The bodies of six young women were found in 2023, The Oregonian reported, months after Calhoun’s original projected released date.
The Portland Police Bureau initially denied that the killings were related. A few days later, Calhoun was arrested after fleeing into the Willamette River, and booked in jail for violating the terms of his prison supervision agreement. WW reported on Monday that he’s a suspect in at least four of the killings.
This story was updated several times Tuesday evening as new information was provided by several agencies.