A Multnomah County jury has once again found Michael Lavon Rhone and Mathew Charles Monhead guilty of first-degree rape and sodomy for a 2000 attack, closing the book on a rare legal do-over that grew out of Oregon's reckoning with non-unanimous jury verdicts.
The new verdict, returned Friday, reconvicted both men of Rape in the First Degree and Sodomy in the First Degree, according to the Portland Tribune. Deputy District Attorney Quinn Zemel prosecuted the case at retrial and secured unanimous guilty verdicts this time around.
How the Retrial Happened
This case did not come back to court by accident. It was swept up in a wave of challenges after courts revisited Oregon's long-standing use of split jury verdicts in felony cases.
In Ramos v. Louisiana, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that felony convictions require unanimous jury verdicts, a decision that undercut Oregon's old system of allowing 10-2 verdicts, as summarized by Oyez. Oregon's own high court later went a step further in Watkins v. Ackley, applying that rule retroactively in state post-conviction proceedings, according to the Oregon Public Defense Commission. That combination opened the door for Rhone and Monhead to seek a new trial.
The Original Case
Prosecutors said the attack happened on August 9, 2000, when a woman walking home was assaulted in an alley. Rhone and Monhead were 17 years old at the time.
A Multnomah County jury convicted them in 2001 by a 10-2 vote under the law then in effect. Both served roughly 200 months in prison. Because those sentences have already been completed, the new convictions do not add prison time, according to a news release from the Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office.
In that statement, Zemel said, “I am proud of the work of law enforcement that made this re-trial possible.” He added that the verdict “will allow the defendants to continue to be held accountable and provides a continued sense of justice for the victim,” according to the Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office. The office also publicly thanked investigators and victim advocates who helped track down witnesses again, nearly a quarter-century after the crime.
Investigation and Testimony
One of the most striking pieces of testimony came from Sgt. Jason Sery, who worked the case both then and now. Sery, who was a Portland Police officer in 2000 and is now with the Beaverton Police Department, testified that he spotted and arrested the pair during the attack itself, according to the Portland Tribune. He told the outlet he was “incredibly grateful for all the hard work and investigation that went into this retrial.”
Broader Legal Fallout
The Rhone and Monhead retrial is part of a larger legal aftershock playing out across Oregon courtrooms.
Following Ramos and Watkins, many non-unanimous convictions have been reopened, spawning a steady stream of post-conviction litigation and a smaller number of full retrials. As noted by FindLaw, the Watkins ruling allows people convicted by non-unanimous juries to seek post-conviction relief, which forces prosecutors to decide whether they can realistically retry years-old cases.
In this instance, prosecutors opted to put the case in front of a new jury, even though the practical outcome will not change the defendants' time behind bars. Instead, the new verdict functions as an affirmation under current constitutional standards and a formal end to a case that has lingered in Oregon's legal system for 25 years.
Court filings related to the verdict, including any post-trial motions, were not yet publicly available, and the District Attorney’s office indicated that procedural steps such as scheduling would follow the jury's decision.
