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The Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office instituted a new policy last fall of tacking on additional misdemeanor charges for people accused of felonies who failed to appear at their court date.
DA Mike Schmidt’s office acknowledged the new policy after WW obtained records showing the number of defendants charged with “failure to appear” has skyrocketed in recent months. It’s been used 100 times since prosecutors began employing it in earnest last September, after a pandemic pause.
Reinstituting it is an effort to address a persistent problem facing Portland’s court system: People aren’t showing up, which slows the process and creates headaches for prosecutors trying to close cases. Multnomah County Circuit Court is one of the slowest courts in the state, and with strict restrictions on who can be held in jail, criminal defendants can rack up many charges before ultimately facing sentencing.
Last year, shortly after his office instituted the policy, Schmidt told WW that the snail’s pace of the county’s courts was “frustrating” and blamed Oregon’s shortage of public defenders, who can prod their clients to make court appearances.