A key pretrial hearing for former Gladstone police sergeant Lynn Benton fizzled out without explanation Wednesday in Oregon City, after the judge and attorneys waited for about an hour with no movement on the case. Benton had been expected to enter a plea ahead of a retrial scheduled for July.
After roughly an hour of waiting, the appearance was quietly called off, and neither prosecutors nor the defense put any reason on the record for the delay, according to KPTV. The outlet reported that it remains unclear when Benton will formally enter a plea or when the court will reset the hearing.
Case background
Debbie Higbee-Benton was found dead in her Gladstone hair salon on May 28, 2011. Investigators said she had been beaten, strangled and shot. Prosecutors alleged Benton arranged her killing, and he was convicted in 2016 after a trial that included testimony about alleged jailhouse confessions, as reported by The Seattle Times.
Appeals and reversal
The Oregon Court of Appeals reversed Benton's conviction in 2022, finding that prosecutors had relied improperly on an inmate informant and sending the case back for a new trial. Coverage of the ruling noted that the decision turned on whether the informant had effectively acted as an agent of law enforcement when collecting Benton's statements, KTVZ reported.
What's next
A new trial is currently set to begin in July, although court calendars and filings around the case have not yet been fully clarified. KPTV reported that prosecutors and Benton's lawyers offered no immediate explanation for the canceled hearing and did not announce a new date for a plea to be entered.
Legal stakes
Appellate judges concluded that confessions Benton allegedly made to a fellow inmate were central to his original conviction, creating the legal basis to overturn the verdict. Tung Yin, a law professor at Lewis & Clark, described the ruling as "a cautionary tale" about how prosecutors handle jailhouse informants, as detailed by Oxygen.
