In a rare public showdown inside Multnomah County’s justice system, District Attorney Nathan Vasquez has told his prosecutors not to steer serious felony cases into Judge Adrian L. Brown’s courtroom, effectively benching an elected trial judge from the county’s most high-stakes prosecutions.
The move grew out of an internal affidavit and a memo flagging a string of rulings by Brown, and it has split local lawyers and court managers over whether Vasquez is protecting the integrity of major cases or muscling in on judicial independence.
As first reported by The Oregonian/OregonLive, Vasquez’s team pulled together an internal, unfiled memorandum cataloging eight rulings they viewed as problematic, then backed it up with a single affidavit in May 2025 claiming the state could not get a fair trial in Brown’s courtroom. The packet included a May 7, 2025 affidavit by prosecutor Todd Jackson and snippets from internal team chats that, according to the DA’s office, showed a pattern they believed was undermining major prosecutions.
Why the DA Drew a Line
Vasquez’s directive landed at a time when the entire system was already creaking under pressure from an Oregon Supreme Court decision that could lead to hundreds of criminal cases being tossed if defendants did not receive lawyers quickly enough, a development that prosecutors say has forced them to be choosier about which cases move forward, according to OPB. Chronic staffing and scheduling breakdowns on the public defender side have turned some trial dates into moving targets, prosecutors argue, raising the stakes around which courtrooms they trust with their most serious charges.
The Case at the Center
A key flashpoint is the 2022 prosecution of Samuel W. Rich in Brown’s courtroom. According to court records and subsequent reporting, a jury acquitted Rich of first-degree assault but convicted him of first-degree criminal mistreatment and other offenses, and he later received a six-year sentence. That punishment has since been described by the Oregon Department of Justice as overlong and likely to be reversed, according to The Oregonian/OregonLive.
Brown has pushed back hard, issuing a roughly 1,900-word statement defending her record. Internal chat excerpts reproduced in the reporting include sharp asides, such as “babygate!!!!!” and a complaint that “after 3 weeks of dda chuck mickley i am exhausted. good grief that guy argues about everything!” The back-and-forth over those comments and individual rulings helped prompt Vasquez to draw a firm boundary about which dockets his office will pursue in her courtroom.
Legal Experts Divided
The legal community is split on whether Vasquez’s strategy is a legitimate use of prosecutorial discretion or a pressure play aimed at an elected judge. Some scholars note that one mistaken ruling is rarely enough to sideline a judge from an entire category of cases, while others argue that if prosecutors genuinely believe they cannot receive fair trials before a particular judge, affidavits raising systemic concerns can justify unusually aggressive steps.
The practical fight is grounded in Oregon’s judge-disqualification statutes and their tight timing rules. Under ORS 14.250 through 14.270, a party can file an affidavit and motion claiming it cannot obtain a fair trial, which can trigger reassignment of the case unless the presiding judge finds the motion was filed in bad faith. The statutes’ strict deadlines and procedural traps frequently determine who wins these battles, according to Oregon law.
What the Court Is Doing Now
For the moment, Multnomah County Presiding Judge Judith Matarazzo is largely avoiding case assignments that would put Vasquez’s directive in direct conflict with Brown’s docket. Court administrators are reshuffling calendars behind the scenes to keep disruptions to a minimum. That workaround has helped keep high-profile trials rolling along, but it has also left an uncomfortable, unanswered question about how long a prosecutor’s office can, or should, boycott a sitting trial judge it believes is undermining its cases.
What’s Next
Brown is running unopposed for re-election in 2026, and the standoff could eventually land in a broad disqualification hearing or be defused quietly through internal assignment decisions. For now, both Brown and Vasquez maintain that they are operating within the existing rules, while lawyers and judges wait to see when, and how, Oregon will draw a clearer line on just how far prosecutors can go in refusing to put serious felonies in front of an elected trial judge.
