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A document quietly published on Multnomah County Circuit Court’s website Friday outlines significant changes to how the court decides whether to hold criminal defendants in jail pending trial, a process known as “pretrial release.”
The most notable change: Anyone charged with dealing fentanyl will be held in jail until “first appearance” in court, when a judge can set bail.
“It is the intent of this Presiding Judge...that offenses involving the manufacture or delivery of fentanyl should be held for appearance in court and not released,” the document, signed by Multnomah County Presiding Judge Judith Matarazzo, reads.
The change was expected, as policymakers have been pushing judges to make it for some time. The reason: The court has struggled to ensure criminal defendants appear in court.
This struggle became readily apparent on downtown Portland streets with the passage of Measure 110, which decriminalized possession of fentanyl but not its sale. But thanks to the swift release of accused dealers, that became a distinction without a difference.
In Multnomah County, fentanyl dealers are booked and immediately released from jail only to return to the activity on downtown Portland street corners that got them arrested in the first place, as WW first reported last summer. On some city blocks, dealers set up open-air drug markets that appeared to operate with impunity.
Critics, including Multnomah County District Attorney-elect Nathan Vasquez, have pointed to a 2022 bail reform law that overhauled the pretrial release system as part of the problem. But changes to the system have been slow in coming.
Meanwhile, lawmakers have taken more drastic steps to get fentanyl off Portland’s streets, reversing large portions of Measure 110 and recriminalizing the possession of illicit drugs.
Now the loophole that allowed accused dealers in Portland to return to their trade within hours has been closed. Those defendants will have to at least appear before a judge before they are released.
Presiding Judge Matarazzo’s order comes after Oregon Chief Justice Meagan Flynn issued a similar, but less sweeping, statewide order in May that required those accused of some serious drug offenses, such as delivering to a minor or distributing “precursor” chemicals, be held in jail.
But Flynn’s order left it up to local judges to decide what to do in less serious circumstances.
Matarazzo’s order goes into effect Aug. 1. It includes a laundry list of other circumstances in which defendants will be held in jail, such as suspected repeat offenses, although some of the changes won’t go into effect until next year.