Oregon's backlog of criminal defendants without a lawyer has fallen 66% in one year, dropping from more than 4,000 to 1,104 as of Aug. 31.
Ken Sanchagrin, executive director of the Oregon Public Defense Commission, reported the figures to a legislative committee in September, The Oregonian first reported. Multnomah County's unrepresented defendant count fell 57%. Washington County's dropped 83% and has stayed below 100 for the past 30 days.
The progress comes with a cost Portland residents can measure in dismissed cases. Multnomah County District Attorney Nathan Vasquez said about 1,500 criminal cases have been dismissed since the Oregon Supreme Court's February ruling, including 815 property crimes, 186 robberies and about two dozen assault and sex crime cases.
Those dismissals are without prejudice. Prosecutors can refile charges. But Vasquez signaled frustration with the county's pace of improvement.
"Multnomah County is becoming an island, the holdout from where the rest of the state is," Vasquez said.
What drove the decline
Several factors cut the backlog. The Legislature passed a $707 million public defense budget during the 2025 session, a 14.8% increase from the previous two-year cycle, and funded 180 new positions, according to OPB.
Sanchagrin replaced Jessica Kampfre, whom Gov. Tina Kotek fired as the commission's director in April 2025. He launched a seven-point plan in June 2025 that expanded contracts with lawyers and nonprofits, increased voluntary caseloads and brought on supervised law students, according to the Oregon Capital Chronicle.
New hires at nonprofit defense firms, a state-staffed trial division and special dockets in Coos, Jackson, Marion and Multnomah counties also helped. Those dockets alone processed an estimated 1,000 cases, Sanchagrin told the committee.
Sanchagrin attributed Washington County's faster progress in part to an "unusually nimble" approach: reassigning public defenders from other counties whose caseloads were below the state standard.
About 20% of the cases that left the backlog since February were tied to the Supreme Court's dismissal rule, according to agency officials.
The dismissal rule
The court ruled unanimously in February 2026 that charges must be dismissed if a defendant goes without a court-appointed attorney for 60 days in a misdemeanor case or 90 days in a felony case after their first court appearance.
When the ruling came down, Vasquez and Washington County District Attorney Kevin Barton warned of mass dismissals. "Our house is on fire," they wrote in a joint statement in February 2026, when more than 900 Multnomah County cases met the criteria, OPB reported.
Barton said the dismissals let the state "start fresh" but acknowledged the open question of whether the backlog will tick back up.
Still 1,100 without lawyers
Kotek, in a statement Thursday, Sept. 10, called the 66% reduction a turning point but said the work is not done, according to KOIN.
Carl Macpherson, executive director of Metropolitan Public Defenders, one of two large nonprofit firms handling most Multnomah County cases, pushed back on Vasquez's criticism. He said his lawyers carry caseloads near capacity and maintain high trial acquittal and dismissal rates. The Oregonian reported that Stacey Reding, executive director of Multnomah Defenders, did not respond to an email seeking comment.
No date has been set for a follow-up legislative hearing on the backlog.
