Conrad Wilson
Oregon Public BroadcastingConrad 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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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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Wednesday’s decision by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals builds on a 2018 ruling involving the city of Boise, which found a person cannot be punished for sleeping in public if there’s nowhere else for them to go.
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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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“I could see the blood dripping off his head onto the ground,” one witness inside the prison told the federal public defender’s office.
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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.
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Prosecutors say Joseph Mahmoud Dibee was a member of the Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front. The attacks targeted places that were thought to be harming animals and their habitats.