Conrad Wilson
Reporter & Producer | OPBConrad Wilson is a reporter and producer covering criminal justice and legal affairs for OPB. Prior to coming to OPB, he was a reporter at Minnesota Public Radio. Before that he ran the news department at an NPR affiliate in Colorado. His work has aired on Marketplace and NPR's Morning Edition and All Things Considered. He has also written for Mashable, The Oregonian, Business Week, City Pages and The Christian Science Monitor. Conrad earned a degree in international political economics and journalism from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.
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House Bill 2572 would provide the state with new tools to prevent paramilitary activity, which has been unlawful in all 50 states, including Oregon, for decades. -
Nearly 200 people currently and formerly held in custody at the Sheridan Federal Correctional Institution had claimed cruel and unusual punishment over prison conditions during and after the COVID-19 pandemic; all claims were dismissed Tuesday
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Oregon is once again being sued over the state’s troubled public defense system that’s left hundreds of people facing criminal charges without the court-appointed attorneys that they’re entitled to under the U.S. Constitution.
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Jessica Kampfe, who heads a public defense nonprofit in Portland, would take over a state agency that has left hundreds without attorneys
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Stephen Singer, who until August was the executive director of the Office of Public Defense Services, says his firing violated state laws designed to protect whistleblowers and charged the head of the Oregon Supreme Court with violating her authority under state law.
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In the race to be Oregon's next governor, the Democratic candidate says she’ll continue Oregon’s moratorium on capital punishment, while the Republican and unaffiliated candidates indicate they will revoke it, which could allow the state to resume executions.
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During a tense hearing in U.S. District Court, the U.S. Department of Justice said conditions at the Bureau of Prisons complex in Sheridan had improved. Oregon’s Federal Public Defender was skeptical.
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Oregon’s public defense system is under severe strain and Chief Justice Martha Walters wrote that the “need for change is too urgent” to delay
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“The plan I am seeking is one that proposes immediate steps that will enable [the Public Defense Services Commission] to fulfill its obligation to provide lawyers for those who have a constitutional right to representation,” Oregon Supreme Court Chief Justice Martha Walters wrote.
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A group of adults in custody who contracted COVID-19 first sued the state in April 2020, This spring a federal magistrate deemed the lawsuit a class action. Oregon appealed the class certification to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. On Thursday, a three-judge panel rejected Oregon's arguments, allowing the case to move forward.
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Despite a constitutional right to an attorney, approximately 500 people charged with crimes have been denied a public defender, according to a lawsuit filed in Multnomah County Circuit Court.
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“The last few years have seen a really troubling rise in bigoted and anti-democracy activity in our society, in our politics,” one expert told OPB.
