Copyright The Oregonian
The beating death of a man at the Clackamas County Jail should prompt the sheriff to tap an outside entity to independently review the circumstances leading to the fatality, three leading scholars on incarceration law and policy said. Reece Richeson, 26, died Oct. 21 at OHSU Hospital after a jailhouse beating Oct. 18. His cellmate, Sapastian Year, 23, has been accused of first-degree murder. Richeson, who was raised in Portland, was remembered by a friend in recent days as an occasional comedian who mined his mental health and substance use for humor. The Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office has so far declined to provide details of the specific circumstances that led to Richeson’s death, including how long it took jailers to respond after the assault began and why they placed Richeson in a cell with a man who had days earlier allegedly pummeled another man who was asleep. The Sheriff’s Office also didn’t publicly disclose Richeson’s death for six days, and at least two Clackamas County commissioners have pressed for details about what happened. “I’m deeply concerned, and we want to know more as quickly as possible,” Commissioner Ben West said. The board should be “vigilant in getting the answers that are needed to make sure that people are safe in custody, that we’re being sensitive to the needs of the family, and that we’re being transparent to the public,” he added. A spokesperson for Clackamas County Sheriff Angela Brandenburg did not directly respond to a question about whether the sheriff would support an outside review, saying only that the agency will conduct its own “standard review of policies and procedures.” To be sure, there is no requirement for an outside review and agencies vary on how they respond to in-custody deaths, with some seeking independent examinations and others keeping investigations in-house. But many experts say all deaths of people in jail should trigger separate outside reviews. “There should just be someone other than the people that may be responsible for this death looking into it,” said Michele Deitch, director of the Prison and Jail Innovation Lab at the University of Texas Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs. It’s not that an agency is incapable of investigating a death in custody, she said, but bringing in an outsider engenders credibility in the quality of the investigation and ensures objectivity. “It leads to just a more trustworthy investigation for the public,” she said. “The public isn’t going to trust an investigation where the agency is, like, ‘There’s nothing to see here, folks.’” ‘Pretty disturbed by it’ Clackamas County deputies seemingly had reason to keep an eye on Year when they placed him in a cell with Richeson on Oct. 10: one day earlier, authorities allege, Year had attacked a different cellmate. The newsroom interviewed that cellmate, William Maupin, 30, who described his attacker as someone “hearing voices or something.” The sheriff’s office has said only that Year and Richeson were moved into the same disciplinary unit because of unspecified misconduct. The attack on Richeson came about a week later. Another man in custody told his lawyer that the fatal assault of Richeson allegedly dragged on without quick intervention from jailers, leaving others on the unit shaken. Authorities have said they “discovered an assault taking place” and found Richeson “unconscious and unresponsive.” Year’s attorney has declined to comment. Clackamas County Commissioner Paul Savas said he and his colleagues have not yet been briefed on what happened. “I have way more questions, and I am just very disappointed that the Board of County Commissioners was not notified of this,” Savas said of the death. Commissioner Martha Schrader said the death warrants a review, but “whether it’s independent or internal, that’s a conversation we’re going to have to have with our sheriff.” “I’m pretty disturbed by it,” Schrader said. “If people are incarcerated for whatever reason, you want to make sure that they’re safe.” She said the sheriff is responsible for the jail, “but as I’ve always said, the buck stops with the commission.” Commissioner Diana Helm declined to comment. Through a spokesperson, County Chair Craig Roberts declined to respond to a question about whether the sheriff should bring in outside investigators to review the circumstances that led to Richeson’s killing. Roberts retired as sheriff in 2020. Brandenburg previously served as one of Roberts’ top managers. ‘A conflict of interest’ Several outside experts said an outside review of Richeson’s death is warranted. Andrea Armstrong, a professor of law at Loyola University New Orleans College of Law, said in an email that an outside entity could be an independent expert, law enforcement agency or even the state attorney general, “so long as the investigation is not conducted by the same entity that is operating the facility where the death occurred.” The focus of such investigations varies but in general should look at factors that directly contributed to the death, said Armstrong, a 2023 MacArthur Fellow who runs a public database that tracks in-custody deaths in South Carolina and Louisiana. An outside review, she said, assures that the family of the person who died and the public will receive “a fair and objective accounting of what happened.” Locally, the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office typically conducts its own investigations of in-custody deaths. But two years ago, the sheriff sought two independent investigations into the jail system after a string of fatalities. The sheriff asked the Oregon State Police and the National Institute of Corrections to review the cases. A spokesperson for the Marion County Sheriff’s Office said it requests an outside law enforcement agency to investigate — and news releases from recent years show that’s often been the Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office. “As you can imagine, when police are reviewing themselves, there’s a conflict of interest,” said Terence Keel, a professor in the Department of African American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles and author of “The Coroner’s Silence: Death Records and the Hidden Victims of Police Violence.” He questioned if Richeson’s death, after it is investigated, could eventually be considered “a case of institutional homicide.” “What I mean by that is, if law enforcement knowingly and willingly put someone in a cell with another individual who has a known, documented history of inflicting violence, the sheriff’s deputies who placed (Richeson) in a vulnerable position should be held accountable for doing that,” Keel said. Former prosecutor Michael Gennaco, a national consultant to police departments on officer accountability, didn’t say an outside review was necessary. But he said one might “be helpful to provide some credibility into how this all went down and identify any issues that should be looked at on a forward-going basis to keep the inmates that they have there safe.” Gennaco said jail staff should “absolutely” have considered past behavior when deciding where to place the man accused in Clackamas County. “It strikes me as unusual that he wasn’t put in a one-person cell for a period of time,” Gennaco said. “He’s already got a track record of abusing a fellow cellmate.” Gennaco was hired in 2017 by the Clackamas County Board of Commissioners to review the sheriff’s office after a scandal involving a detective who ignored criminal complaints, including sex offenses and crimes against children. The review offered a stinging analysis of the sheriff’s office’s history of responding to problems involving its deputies. It concluded that the agency brushed off the sergeant who blew the whistle on the detective and had rejected a suggestion that an outside agency examine the role of supervisors in failing to respond to the detective’s substandard work. Gennaco’s group also found that agency leaders had refused to take responsibility for mishandling the whistleblower complaint. ‘A special kind of person’ Before his death, Richeson formed a bond with local comedian Cait Chock, 39, of Portland. Chock said she met Richeson a year ago after he got into her car on a Lyft ride. She said they hit it off immediately and she encouraged him to try comedy. She asked him to take part in two comedy shows she organized last year at McMenamins Al’s Den in downtown Portland. He did, she said, and excelled. Richeson told jokes about his own mental health and addiction history, problems he spoke about openly. The two shared a connection over those struggles and “were able to understand each other,” she said. “That’s something I truly admired about him, just being an open book,” she said. “It takes a special kind of person to own that and then be able to turn it into laughter and connect with people.” She said Richeson grew up in Portland and worked as a server and host at restaurants, including Taste Tickler in Northeast Portland. He always seemed to bump into someone he knew when he walked around downtown, she said. “He would just give them a fist bump,” she said. “He just made people feel so seen.” But Richeson struggled this year, she said. Court records show he faced multiple allegations related to theft and drug possession dating to April. He landed back in jail this month on charges that included methamphetamine possession, harassment and theft. “But he knew there were people behind him, and I believe if he was alive, he would have pulled out of it,” she said. “He didn’t even get the chance.”
