- FRANÇOIS VIGNEAULT
Multnomah County Circuit Judge Stephen Bushong looked down and scratched at the back of his neck, like you do when you don’t like your options.
The judge had just heard, this morning, from attorneys in the case of Alexandra Barrett, the homeless woman whose many arrests and citations for camping-related offenses last year served as an impromptu battle ground over a City of Portland ordinance outlawing camping on public property. That fight eventually came down on the city’s side, with Bushong ruling the camping ban is perfectly legal, even while warning that it wasn’t good policy.
The ruling meant Barrett had to stand trial earlier this month for 18 misdemeanor offenses—most related to her homelessness. A jury convicted her of 17 of them.
The options Bushong didn’t like this morning, then, had to do with how to sentence Barrett.
A prosecutor had just argued the woman should be treated sternly, asking she get a year in jail.
“She’s been on misdemeanor and felony probation, and has failed both,” Deputy District Attorney Andrew Sherwood told the judge. “Ms. Barrett at this point needs to be sent a message.”
Barrett’s public defender, meanwhile, agreed Barrett shouldn’t be put on probation. Defense attorney Francis Gieringer said Barrett chafed under court-ordered supervision, and had a better shot out in the homeless community—a place where she’s accepted, but has also lapsed into drug use. Gieringer asked Bushong to give her 30 days in jail.
“The plan from both of your perspectives is: She gets some jail time, gets released from jail, and what?” the judge asked. “She goes back to doing what she has been? Don’t you have a better plan? Does anybody have a better plan?”
No one did.
Barrett, wearing a white jail jumpsuit and sporting a braided mohawk, first declined to speak up for herself or answer questions about what she’d like to do with her life. But when Bushong indicated he’d prefer to assign her community service, she interjected: “Max me out, please,” she said. “I just wanna be out.”
She’d take jail and jail alone, if possible. She didn’t want community service.
So Bushong scratched at his neck and thought for a minute, then quietly delivered his ruling:
“I don’t think we as a community benefit by jailing people because they are homeless,” the judge said. “My preference would be to have Ms. Barrett do community service. That’s not the state’s preference. That’s not Ms. Barrett’s preference or her lawyer’s preference.”
The judge gave Barrett 60 days in jail, which will put her out at roughly the same time she’ll be released for violating her probation on another misdemeanor case. He suspended her fines.
“Hopefully when she’s released from custody she’ll figure out a plan,” Bushong said. “There’s only so many things I can do here.”
Great so a drug addled career criminal with no remorse and no desire to repent for her crimes gets basically no punishment as she is already in jail for another offense. Makes you wish that the stocks were an option.
This happened in progressive Portland, Oregon? I’m shocked.
“Career criminal,” econoline? Her offenses are almost all for camping or otherwise related to camping. I’m not really surprised if she’s not super-remorseful for being homeless. Christ.
You tough on crime types would be disgusted by the Canadian penal code, where people are only required to serve one third of their sentence before they are eligible for parole and most sentences are already pretty short anyways. And yet Canada is still there, quietly freezing its ass off in the woods and not slipping into utter crime induced chaos…
If we are unable to present people with viable and reasonable alternatives to homelessness or crime or whatever, then the entire point of the criminal justice system is rendered moot.
This woman is trapped in a homeless situation many are trapped in, and the system makes money from their homelessness. I spent 2 years homeless by choice studying this problem in portland. I am ashamed to think that the people of this city are so heartless. Many people drink and do drugs just to fall asleep at night because of the screaming, sirens, and by being preyed upon while trying to survive. This camping ban is inhumain. I dare any of you come come out on these streets with me for an education you will never forget…any takers?