Multnomah County District Attorney Mike Schmidt's office was rocked when an attorney in the office, Amber Kinney a level 3 Child Abuse Prosecutor in the Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office, resigned and sent an open letter to the Oregonian blasting Schmidt's management of the office.

In the letter, Kinney cited increased workloads and how they disproportionately impact women as well as "the lack of leadership opportunities for women," saying this was the reason "we have lost so many experienced and talented female attorneys. Since you took office in August 2020, we have lost eight career prosecutors -- seven of the eight are women. I am the ninth. And I will not be the last."



Kinney continued:

"Our caseloads are unreasonably high due also (and in large part) to mismanagement within our office. And that is your fault. The cases I handle are almost entirely comprised of Ballot Measure 11 (mandatory minimum) felonies, many subject to laws requiring a mandatory minimum of 25 years in prison (Ballot Measure 73 and Jessica’s Law). As you are keenly aware, you ran a campaign opposed to Ballot Measure 11 and mandatory minimum prison sentences. However, since taking office 18 months ago, you have not provided any new policies or direction to the DDAs about how we should handle mandatory minimum cases: whether we should resolve them differently, or whether we should issue them differently.

Kinney concluded, "There is no transparency. I don’t know whether the lack of transparency is due to your intentional desire to prevent scrutiny, or perhaps a genuine absence of structure and coherent decision making."


--Staff Reports

Post Date: 2022-07-08 16:04:32

Last Update: 2022-07-08 16:45:12