10/11/2022 11:06 AM

22CV34820

4 IN THE CIRCUIT COURT OF THE STATE OF OREGON

5 FOR THE COUNTY OF MULTNOMAH
6
STEPHEN SINGER, Case No.
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Plaintiff,
8 COMPLAINT
9 vs.
(Public Whistleblower Retaliation
10 THE STATE OF OREGON by and ORS 659A.203; Wrongful Discharge)
through the PUBLIC DEFENSE
11 SERVICES COMMISSION,
Damages: $2,430,000
12 Defendant. ORS 21.0160(1)(d)
13 (Claims not subject to mandatory
arbitration)
14
Jury Trial Requested
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 1 Preliminary Statement
2 1. The Oregon Public Defense Services Commission (PDSC), which hires
3 and supervises the director of the Office of Public Defense Services (OPDS), is
4 governed by an ostensibly independent board. Although the board is appointed by the
5 Chief Justice of Oregon, the statute establishing it is designed to protect the
6 independence of public defense and accordingly recognizes that the Chief Justice may
7 not control public defense. And that is for good reason: as the Legislature heard when
8 it most recently amended the statute, true independence of the defense function from
9 judicial and prosecutorial control is a cornerstone of an effective public defense
10 system.
11 2. On August 10, 2022, the Chief Justice urged the PDSC to fire Plaintiff
12 Stephen Singer, who was then Executive Director of OPDS. The PDSC refused. And
13 so, just three business days later, on August 16, 2022, the Chief Justice disbanded
14 the PDSC. The very next day, she appointed a new PDSC. And the day after that, the
15 new PDSC met to fire Singer. It ultimately accomplished that the following day.
16 3. The Chief Justice s reasons for firing Singer highlight wh independent
17 public defense is so important in the first place. During his eight-month tenure as
18 Executive Director, Singer pushed back against the Chief Justice s attempts to
19 increase public-defender workloads beyond Constitutional bounds, to appoint
20 obviously unqualified attorneys to represent indigent defendants, and to meddle in
21 the day-to-day affairs of public defense in Oregon.
22 4. Because Singer s reports to the PDSC and the Chief Justice disclosed
23 violations of federal and state law, as well as gross mismanagement of a public
24 agenc , and because the Chief Justice s mass firing of the PDSC violated Oregon
25 public policy as defined in ORS 151.213, Singer brings this Action for a violation of
26 ORS 659A.203 and the tort of wrongful discharge.
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 1 Parties
2 5. Plaintiff Stephen Singer was executive director of OPDS from December
3 2021 until August 18, 2022, when he was fired by the PDSC just two days after the
4 Chief Justice disbanded the PDSC and appointed a new one because the original one
5 refused to carry out her expressed plan to fire Singer.
6 6. Singer has over thirty years of experience in public defense. After
7 graduating from Harvard Law School, he clerked on the District of Columbia Court
8 of Appeals. After his clerkship, he worked as an attorney at the Public Defender
9 Service for the District of Columbia, which is widely recognized as a model public
10 defender office and one of the best in the country. Singer then spent many years
11 handling death penalty cases in Louisiana. He also has extensive appellate
12 experience as well as experience handling post-conviction and habeas corpus cases
13 and training investigators and public defenders across the country. Singer also spent
14 more than a decade as a law professor, teaching doctrinal courses in criminal law and
15 procedure as well as ethics and professional responsibility and directing criminal
16 defense clinics at the University of Wyoming and Loyola University New Orleans.
17 While he was a law professor at Loyola, Singer led the effort to rebuild and completely
18 overhaul the public defense system in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Singer
19 was also involved in statewide public-defense reform in Louisiana and served on the
20 Louisiana State Public Defender Board (Louisiana s analogue to the PDSC) including
21 its budget committee (Singer has a B.S. degree in Finance). Singer has received
22 many awards for his service and vision, including the Stephen B. Bright Public
23 Defender Award from Gideon s Promise, Kentuck s Lincoln Leadership Award (as
24 leader of the reform management team of the New Orleans Public Defender Office),
25 and the Southern Center for Human Rights Frederick Douglass Award (same). He is
26 a nationally recognized expert and leader in public defense.
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 1 7. Defendant PDSC, acting on behalf of the State of Oregon, has statutory
2 authority to hire and fire the Executive Director of OPDS. The PDSC conducts
3 significant operations in Multnomah County from its permanent offices there, which
4 are called the Public Defense Resources Center. The State of Oregon acting through
5 its Public Defense Services Commission is the proper defendant in a State emplo ee s
6 action for wrongful-discharge and for firing in violation of ORS § 659.203.
7 8. Per Ramfjord, the PDSC chair, has no experience or background in
8 public defense. Indeed, the only experience he has had in the criminal legal system
9 was thirty years ago when he spent the first four years of his legal career as a
10 prosecutor in Washington, D.C. Since then, he has worked at large law firms
11 representing almost exclusively wealthy individuals and businesses in white-collar
12 criminal, environmental, tax, and energy matters.
13 9. Chief Justice Martha Walters also has no experience or background in
14 public defense. She has been a justice on the Oregon Supreme Court since 2006 and
15 became Chief Justice in 2018. Prior to her appointment to the Oregon Supreme Court,
16 she was a labor and employment attorney.
17 10. When the PDSC declined the Chief Justice s urgings to fire Singer, its
18 members were Per Ramfjord (Chair), Thomas Christ, Mark Hardin, Alton Harvey,
19 Lisa Ludwig, Paul Solomon, Chris Thomas, Steve Wax, and Max Williams. After the
20 Chief Justice fired all these people, she reappointed Ramfjord, Solomon, Ludwig, and
21 Williams, all of whom voted to fire Singer, and Harvey, who did not. The Chief Justice
22 added Jennifer Parrish Taylor, Peter Buckely, Jennifer Nash, and Kristen
23 Winemiller to replace the commissioners who did not go along with her plan to fire
24 Singer. The Chief Justice is and was at all relevant times an ex officio, non-voting
25 member of the PDSC. At all times relevant to this Action, many of the commissioners
26 lived and worked in Multnomah County.
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 1 Jurisdiction and Venue
2 11. This Court has jurisdiction over the Action under ORS 30.265 and
3 659A.885.
4 12. Venue is proper in this Court under ORS 14.060 because this is a suit
5 against a[] . . . commission or board of the state and some part of the cause of suit
6 . . . arose in Multnomah count .
7 Singer Is Hired to Reform a Broken System
8 13. In 2001, the Oregon legislature created OPDS and its oversight body,
9 PDSC. OPDS and the PDSC are responsible for establishing and maintaining a
10 statewide public-defense system that complies not only with the federal and state
11 constitutions but also national standards for effective representation. PDSC satisfies
12 this responsibility at the appellate level by directly employing attorneys in its
13 Appellate Division who represent eligible clients on direct appeals and certain other
14 post-conviction matters, and by maintaining a panel of qualified attorneys to handle
15 cases where there is a conflict of interest.
16 14. There are, however, no salaried employees of OPDS providing counsel
17 to indigent clients at the trial level. Instead, OPDS provides trial-level representation
18 across the state by contracting with legal services providers. Service is provided
19 through annual or bi-annual contracts with non-profit public-defense offices;
20 consortia of private attorneys working independently and forming groups for the
21 purpose of contracting with OPDS; private for-profit law firms; non-profit law firms;
22 and a handful of individual attorneys.
23 15. While virtually all the attorneys providing direct representation at the
24 non-profit public-defense offices are full-time public defenders, the vast majority of
25 the rest handle public-defense cases only part time, devoting the rest of their time to
26 private practice.
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 1 16. The contracts that OPDS signs do not specify how the contractors are to
2 provide services; instead, the contracts (until a recent change discussed below)
3 credited service providers with a certain amount of money for every case they handle
4 based on the type of case and without regard to how they handle the case.
5 17. In 2018, the PDSC asked the Sixth Amendment Center, a non-profit
6 organization with experience and expertise in evaluating public-defense systems, to
7 evaluate Oregon s s stem and produce a report. That report came out in Januar
8 2019, and it was damning. The report concluded that Oregon s complex bureaucratic
9 system for managing public defense obscured fatal flaws in its delivery of services:
10 Some attorneys handled workloads many multiples more than national standards for
11 effective counsel. And, because the method of compensating attorneys credited
12 providers by the case, not by the amount of work they did, the system incentivized
13 them to take as many cases as possible and work as little on each as they could. This
14 problem was exacerbated by the fact that most of the attorneys handling public
15 defense cases were part time with their private practices, which compensated them
16 at far higher rates, competing for their time. The report further noted that the
17 composition of the PDSC does not adhere to national standards, as required by
18 Oregon law, because the independence of the public-defense function is compromised
19 by the Chief Justice s power to control the membership of the PDSC.
20 18. Nancy Cozine was the director of OPDS from September 2011 through
21 January 2018. Lane Borg served until March 2021. Ed Jones, a retired judge, took
22 over as the interim director after Borg until Singer was hired to start on December 1,
23 2021.
24 19. In response to the Sixth Amendment Center report, Borg attempted to
25 push through major systemic changes to create a statewide public-defense system
26 staffed by full-time state employees, which is generally considered by experts in the
27 field to be the best model for delivering public-defense services. When Borg s attempt
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 1 failed, as a fall back, some minor changes were made to the compensation system for
2 attorneys and contractors. Now, in essence, contractors would be paid based on the
3 full-time-equivalent work of their attorneys and not merely on the cases handled. And
4 the PDSC put a modest cap based on outdated and widely criticized standards on
5 attorne s workloads. Even this ostensible workload cap did not address fundamental
6 workload issues because, as noted above, the vast majority of attorneys providing
7 trial-level public-defense representation work part time with private practices and
8 cases that pay far higher rates than public defense cases. The fundamental incentive
9 to spend as little time as possible on public defense cases remained.
10 20. In mid- to late-2021, the PDSC having seen, and indeed commissioned,
11 the Sixth Amendment Center report describing their public-defense system as
12 unconstitutional, unethical, and in crisis interviewed Singer for the executive
13 director s position. As explained above, Singer is well known in the national public-
14 defense community for, among other things, turning around the public-defense
15 system in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. In his interview with the PDSC,
16 Singer explained that major, structural reforms to a public-defense system are often
17 painful: those who maintain the existing system have, by definition, failed to live up
18 to what the Constitution and their ethical obligations as lawyers command, and they
19 are never happy to hear that. In addition, those who are working within a flawed
20 system for decades develop an interest in the status quo. The PDSC knew that Singer
21 had a principled and uncompromising commitment to public-defense clients, and that
22 he is a forceful and outspoken advocate for the poor and powerless who is known for
23 speaking truth to power. Indeed, the PDSC was aware during the interview process
24 that Singer, as the leader of public-defense reform in New Orleans, had been held in
25 contempt a dozen times or more for his steadfast refusal to bend to the will of the
26 existing power structure and for his refusal to go along with judicial threats to reform
27 and the clients he served.
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 1 21. Singer understands that large indigent-defense systems are, in some
2 ways, like container ships: they are very difficult to get moving, and when they start
3 moving in a certain direction it is extremely difficult to change course. Singer said
4 several times during the interview process that he planned to spend the first six to
5 nine months or even up to a year of his tenure studying and understanding Oregon s
6 complex public-defense system and the people working within it to understand how
7 it could best be maneuvered into compliance with the United States and Oregon
8 Constitutions and national standards as required by Oregon law.
9 22. He would have no such luxury. Almost immediately upon his arrival,
10 Singer was confronted with a series of crises that demanded his immediate attention.
11 These crises would command his attention through his whole tenure in Oregon.
12 Singer Resists Attempts to Convince Unqualified Lawyers to Volunteer
13 23. By mid-January of 2022, Singer was confronted with a grave crisis that
14 PDSC knew about but had not alerted him to. By that point, many Oregonians were
15 facing criminal charges without counsel at all, the majority of whom were charged in
16 Multnomah County. The problem was complicated and multifaceted. The pandemic
17 had aggravated existing attorney shortages, and newly created caseload limitations
18 made it more difficult for the system to rely on overburdened attorneys. In addition,
19 attorneys within the system had contracts to handle specific case types in only one
20 jurisdiction. This meant that acute shortages in one county or case type could not be
21 addressed simply by reallocating existing resources. At the same time, as the Sixth
22 Amendment Center report noted, Oregon s public-defense delivery system is
23 byzantine, inefficient, and wasteful.
24 24. When Singer began, he was told that he would meet weekly with
25 Ramfjord, Cozine the State Court Administrator and a former director of OPDS
26 before Borg and the Chief Justice. As Singer s tenure continued, these meetings
27 became more frequent. Singer believed that the meetings were inappropriate, given
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 1 that the Chief Justice is, by statute, forbidden from managing day-to-day public
2 defense, but Singer did not abruptly end them, hoping instead to gradually decrease
3 their frequency to avoid a large conflict with the Chief Justice.
4 25. During one meeting in January, the Chief Justice explained to the group
5 that she was very concerned about the problem of unrepresented defendants. Her
6 primary concern, however, did not appear to be the violation of the defendants
7 constitutional right to proper representation by qualified attorneys. Rather,
8 unrepresented defendants, she said, threatened the public s confidence in the
9 judiciary. And the Chief Justice said that she feared that she was becoming the target
10 of bad press surrounding this issue.
11 26. At several such meetings, the Chief Justice suggested that Singer put
12 out a call to all members of the Oregon bar asking for volunteer lawyers to handle the
13 cases of indigent defendants for whom the state had failed to provide counsel. Singer
14 told the Chief Justice that a similar plan had been tried in Louisiana when he worked
15 there, and that the plan had not been successful. Attorneys without significant
16 criminal-defense experience need supervision and guidance to function effectively,
17 and OPDS and its local providers did not have the resources to supervise and guide
18 attorneys with little to no criminal-defense experience. Singer was polite, but he
19 maintained throughout the conversation that the Chief Justice s suggestion would
20 not be a good idea.
21 27. After Singer declined the Chief Justice s urgings that he send a letter
22 out to the general bar requesting assistance, the Chief Justice suggested sending one
23 herself. Singer repeated his concerns that similar plans had not been successful
24 elsewhere. But Singer conceded that, despite his serious reservations, he was not in
25 a position to tell the Chief Justice what and what not to say in a letter above her own
26 signature. Singer indicated that if the Chief Justice was determined to pursue this
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 1 course, despite the reservations he had expressed, he would do everything he could
2 to support it.
3 28. The Chief Justice went forward despite Singer s advice to the contrary.
4 She was not pleased with the response. Very few lawyers volunteered, and the plan
5 was widely mocked by members of the bar and in the press.
6 29. In a meeting with Singer, Ramfjord, and Cozine on February 4, 2022,
7 the Chief Justice delivered a roughly 35-minute tirade against Singer: She blamed
8 him for the bad reviews among the bar and press she was getting regarding the
9 unrepresented-defendants issue, said that he should have ensured that she did not
10 send out a call for private volunteers to take cases, and criticized him for failing to do
11 what she had asked in the first place send the call for volunteers himself.
12 Throughout the monologue, the Chief Justice demanded that Singer fix the problem
13 of unrepresented defendants immediately.
14 30. Singer agreed, of course, that the problem of unrepresented defendants
15 needed to be addressed, but he believed that the problem could not be solved on the
16 backs of his clients and simpl could not be solved immediatel given Oregon s
17 byzantine public-defense system.
18 31. During these conversations, the Chief Justice appeared principally
19 concerned with ensuring that everyone charged with a crime in Oregon had a lawyer
20 as a formal matter; she expressed no concern that everyone charged with a crime in
21 Oregon be given a lawyer trained and experienced in criminal defense and who could
22 provide good representation. After all, she had served as a Justice since 2006, during
23 which time Oregon s public-defense system relied on the unconstitutional and
24 unethical case-credit system and devolved into the shambolic state about which she
25 now protested, and et there s no reason to believe she ever pressured prior OPDS
26 directors to solve those problems.
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 1 32. On several occasions during the February 4th meeting, the Chief Justice
2 and Cozine asked Singer about his plans to solve the unrepresented-defendant
3 problem immediately. Singer explained that without significant additional funding
4 this was impossible. There were only so many lawyers with criminal defense
5 experience and who were willing to handle public defense cases at rates OPDS could
6 pay, and only so many hours in an acceptable work week. To solve the problem
7 immediately would mean forcing attorneys to work beyond their already crushing
8 workloads some attorneys in Portland reported regularly working 80 or more hours
9 in a week or, worse, forcing them to handle cases in an unconstitutional manner.
10 33. At the same time, Oregon and the rest of the country was (and is) in the
11 midst of a severe labor shortage. By 2022, when Singer took over, the ABA reported,
12 in a multi-year study commissioned by the Oregon legislature, that Oregon had less
13 than a third of the public-defense attorneys it needed to handle the state s
14 representation needs. Money alone could not lead to any immediate or quick
15 resolution of the problem.
16 34. Separately, even with additional funding, Oregon s complex and
17 byzantine public-defense system meant that without careful study and a thorough
18 understanding of the system, any attempts to address the problem immediately could
19 lead to significant and very harmful unintended consequences: If OPDS offered
20 emergency funding for contract attorneys to handle cases for people currently without
21 counsel, funding which would have to be on favorable terms, those attorneys would
22 be incentivized not to renew their existing contracts at their existing terms. If
23 emergencies create opportunities for profit, profit-seeking attorneys will create
24 emergencies.
25 Singer Resists Attempts to Increase Public-Defender Workloads
26 35. Still the Chief Justice and Cozine pressed Singer to solve the
27 unrepresented-defendant problem and to solve it immediately. Singer set out to do
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 1 this consistently with the Constitution and the ethical rules governing attorney
2 caseloads, which required securing additional funding to provide qualified lawyers to
3 unrepresented defendants. And so, at Ramfjord s insistence, Singer rushed to retain,
4 without any competitive bidding or vetting, Jennifer Williamson, a former state
5 representative and candidate for Secretary of State, to assist with lobbying the
6 Legislature and Governor s office to secure additional funding for public defense
7 during the February legislative session and to manage communications for OPDS.
8 36. As the Legislature and Governor debated additional public-defense
9 funding, Singer began to notice an anomaly. The Chief Justice and Cozine, in an effort
10 to speed Singer along, repeatedly told him that the Governor and other high-ranking
11 political officials insisted that OPDS solve the unrepresented-defendant problem
12 before any additional funds could be appropriated. Thus, the Chief Justice and Cozine
13 said, solving the problem needed to happen immediately and needed to be done within
14 OPDS s existing budget. But several sources, including Williamson, said otherwise.
15 The Governor and key legislators understood that the emergency funding was to be
16 used to solve the problem, and so it would make no sense to make the funding
17 contingent on having already solved the problem.
18 37. Nonetheless, Cozine and the Chief Justice frequently demanded that
19 Singer produce a plan to immediately solve the problem. And Singer frequently
20 resisted their attempts. During a series of meetings with judges, public-defense
21 leaders, and prosecutors that the Chief Justice convened at the Multnomah County
22 Courthouse, Singer explained (as he had before) that it was simply impossible for
23 OPDS to immediately solve the unrepresented-defendant problem under its existing
24 budget without compromising other Constitutional values and jeopardizing the long-
25 term availability of public-defense services. And, of course, Oregon prosecutors and
26 Judges could solve the problem immediately, and for free: they could always dismiss
27 the cases of people who had not been provided counsel at critical stages of their
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 1 prosecution after the right to counsel had attached or within a reasonable amount of
2 time after it attached. The vast bulk of unrepresented defendants were not in custody
3 because their cases were not serious or violent. The Constitution likely demanded
4 that prosecutors dismiss such cases. When Singer suggested this, the Chief Justice
5 did not pressure any prosecutors or judges to implement it.
6 38. The Chief Justice had still another suggestion. Perhaps, she suggested
7 during a meeting in Portland, judges could begin requiring criminal defendants to
8 attend in-person settlement conferences. Such a move, she suggested, could
9 encourage them to resolve their cases by guilty plea, thus easing the backlog of
10 unresolved cases and freeing up more attorneys to represent indigent clients. Singer
11 told her that this was not how criminal cases usually worked. The most successful
12 plea negotiations almost always require frank and honest discussions about the cases
13 and people involved that are difficult for clients and complaining witnesses to hear.
14 Therefore, having clients at plea negotiations is often counterproductive to early case
15 resolution. Forcing clients to be present for settlement conferences which, of course,
16 would also eat up scarce attorney working hours, thus exacerbating the problem the
17 Chief Justice was attempting to solve would likely prove counterproductive.
18 39. Early in the February 2022 legislative session, it became clear that due
19 to significant press coverage the unrepresented-defendant issue had garnered the
20 attention of the Governor and leadership in the Legislature. The Governor s Office
21 and Legislative leadership indicated they were prepared to support additional
22 funding to address the problem. Because of tight deadlines arising from Oregon s
23 short legislative calendar in even-numbered years, they requested that Singer
24 develop a plan to present to the legislature within a matter of just a few days. With
25 the assistance primarily of the leaders of the nonprofit public defender offices in
26 Multnomah County, Singer was able to provide the political leaders with a plan
27 within the few days allotted. Singer was frank with the political leaders that even
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 1 with the infusion of additional funding, given the issues explained above, it would
2 take time for even the best of plans to have a significant effect.
3 40. Thankfully, on February 15, 2022, the Legislature and Governor agreed
4 to a package of $12.8 million in emergency funding to hire (on a full-time-equivalent
5 basis) 36 attorneys and provide the necessary support staff and investigation
6 services. This package was developed and negotiated without input from the PDSC.
7 Indeed, the one PDSC meeting that was scheduled during February 2022 was
8 cancelled by Ramfjord. Despite the lack of PDSC involvement, Ramfjord and the rest
9 of the PDSC said that they were very happy about the additional funding Singer was
10 able to secure during the February legislative session.
11 41. For the next several months, Singer and his team worked to use this
12 money to help address the unrepresented-defendant problem. But, because the Chief
13 Justice and Cozine continued to demand that Singer and his team work on time-
14 consuming and unproductive schemes such as using ill-equipped law students,
15 retired attorneys, retired judges, and civil attorneys to represent public-defense
16 clients, and because of the flaws in Oregon s public-defense system, success proved
17 hard to achieve.
18 42. Throughout the remainder of February, the Chief Justice, Cozine, and
19 Ramfjord required Singer to participate in several more meetings with them.
20 Throughout their interactions, the Chief Justice and Cozine continued to pressure
21 Singer to solve the unrepresented-defendant problem immediately. After the Chief
22 Justice concluded that asking members of the Oregon bar to take indigent-defense
23 cases was such a bad idea that she blamed Singer for failing to prevent her from
24 trying it, she and Cozine wondered whether allowing out-of-state attorneys to be
25 admitted on motion to the Oregon bar might be one way to solve the problem.
26 43. During this time, Singer sent many text messages and emails to
27 Ramfjord asking him to try to persuade the Chief Justice and Cozine to avoid
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 1 micromanaging public-defense affairs and to respect that Singer needed time and
2 space to make judgments independently of the judiciary.
3 44. For example, on February 27, 2022, Singer sent an email to Ramfjord in
4 response to the suggestion that Oregon permit out-of-state attorneys to practice in
5 Oregon as a way to alleviate the unrepresented-defendant problem. Per, . . . At some
6 point someone really needs to let [the Chief Justice and Cozine] know that all of this
7 running around jumping from one idea to the next is just not productive. It s a
8 distraction that hinders our ability to focus on real solutions to the problems none of
9 which is going to make the problems go away in the next day, or week, or even
10 months. . . . . There is nothing new here. I assure you I have seen all of these things
11 and a lot of other band aids tried before. It doesn t work this wa . The onl wa to get
12 out of this is hire[] more full time public defenders. While the emergency funding will
13 help, the real solutions lie in the fixing the contracting model and the delivery system.
14 The contract model we are currently operating under is exacerbating a lot of the
15 underlying capacity issues. But we are stuck with those contracts until June 30. We
16 need to focus on fixing the huge problems with the contracts between now and July 1
17 and then look at the overall delivery system. Those are the places we need to putting
18 [sic] our time attention, not these other band aids that at most address a case here or
19 there . . . . I m fine having that conversation with ou and Nanc [Co ine] and the
20 Chief Justice, or let you handle it or handle it myself. But someone needs to tell them
21 that too much attention on the day to day or week to week backlog list is not helping.
22 . . . The problem has been decades in the making and it s not going to get fixed in the
23 next few days, or weeks, or even months.
24 45. To Singer s knowledge Ramfjord never said an thing to the Chief Justice
25 or Cozine on the subject.
26 Singer Resists Judicial Interference With the Defense Function
27 46. On April 22, the Chief Justice asked that Singer and Ramfjord address
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 1 the annual meeting of the presiding judges and trial court administrators in Eugene.
2 Ramfjord could not attend so another commissioner, Steve Wax, who ran the federal
3 public defender office in Portland for man ears, attended in Ramfjord s place. The
4 Chief Justice and Cozine asked Singer to speak generally about changes at OPDS
5 and also to address the unrepresented-defendant issue. During Singer s presentation,
6 the Chief Justice repeatedly stood up and interrupted him, asked him to redirect his
7 presentation entirely to the unrepresented-defendant problem, questioned and
8 interrupted Singer when he attempted to discuss the need for overall systemic reform,
9 and was dismissive of Singer s discussion of the complexity of the issues. At one point,
10 the Chief Justice got up from her seat at a table in the audience and physically ripped
11 the microphone from Singer s hand to change an answer that he was giving to a
12 judge s question. As Wax and Singer drove back together from the conference, Wax
13 commented on how disrespectful and unprofessionally the Chief Justice had behaved
14 towards Singer and said this was in stark contrast to how she treated others at the
15 conference.
16 47. By mid-April, Singer s efforts to address the unrepresented-defendant
17 problem had not completely resolved it. The Chief Justice and Cozine continued to
18 look for an immediate, short-term band-aid solution. During a meeting in mid-April,
19 the Chief Justice and Cozine requested that Singer provide them with caseload
20 numbers for each of the attorneys working at the two non-profit public defense offices
21 in Multnomah County.
22 48. This request concerned Singer for several reasons. First, because of the
23 context in which the request arose, it was clear that the Chief Justice and Cozine
24 hoped that these numbers would reveal that some attorneys had room for more work.
25 But that is not how an attorne s obligation to maintain a caseload allowing her to
26 provide constitutionally adequate service works. Some cases, after all, require much
27 more work than others, and so caseload numbers were unlikely to provide the insight
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 1 and answers that the Chief Justice and Cozine were looking for. Second, the request
2 indicated an inappropriate level of meddling by the judicial branch in public defense
3 affairs. The structure of Oregon s public defense s stem (as explained in greater
4 detail below) and the ABA s ten principles of a public-defense delivery system protect
5 the independence of the Executive Director of OPDS. The Executive Director himself
6 usually does not have access to individual attorney caseload numbers this is part of
7 the problem with the contract system and so it is doubly troubling that the Chief
8 Justice would seek them.
9 49. On April 26, 2022, Singer reported his concerns regarding Co ine s and
10 the Chief Justice s attempts to directl manage the public defense s stem in an email
11 to Ramfjord. I ve gotten a request from Nanc [Co ine] & the C.J. for the caseloads
12 for attorneys at MDI & MPD [the Portland non-profits]. I understand where this is
13 going. It is a bridge too far for me. If Nancy or the C.J. want to run the public defense
14 system they are welcome to appl for m job. . . . But the can t run public defense
15 from their current positions. It s a conflict of interest and it crosses the line. The are
16 also really bad at it. They have kept people running around chasing their tales [sic],
17 including me, to what end? They have produced exactly zero progress. I at least have
18 produced some progress including a bunch of new attorney capacity. I wish it were
19 more & I m working on more but the are making it almost impossible for me to do
20 so. Please give me a call so that we can talk about the most politic way to stop this
21 nonsense.
22 50. Ramfjord did not respond.
23 51. On April 28, 2022, Singer had a video conference with Ramfjord, Cozine,
24 and the Chief Justice. When the Chief Justice initially raised the issue of caseload
25 numbers of individual public defenders, Singer waited to give Ramfjord an
26 opportunity to step in and address the Chief Justice s improper micromanaging of
27 public defense and Singer, as Singer had repeatedly asked him to do. After giving
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 1 Ramfjord more than ten minutes at the outset to step in and seeing that Ramfjord
2 was not going to do so, Singer felt that he had no other choice but to squarely address
3 the issue himself. Singer explained to the Chief Justice that her getting into the
4 specific caseload numbers of particular individual attorneys was neither appropriate
5 nor productive. Singer explained that it was a level of intrusion and micro-
6 management of public defense that was not appropriate for the judiciary, and
7 particularly not the Chief Justice, because it created pressure on attorneys to take
8 more cases and impinged upon the necessary and critical independence of the public-
9 defense function from the judiciary. Singer told the Chief Justice that she and Cozine
10 needed to stay in their lane. Throughout this conversation, Singer s tone was forceful
11 and his comments direct his goal in the conversation was to make clear that he
12 would protect his independence but at no point did he yell, use profanity, make
13 inappropriate ad hominem attacks, or otherwise behave in a professionally
14 inappropriate manner.
15 52. The next day, Ramfjord spoke with Singer after a meeting in the
16 Multnomah Count Courthouse. Ramfjord told Singer that he believed Singer s tone
17 with the Chief Justice is going to be a big problem. Ramfjord said that Singer had
18 created a huge problem and needed to think about how he could fix it. Singer was
19 concerned by this reaction. Ramfjord appeared upset not only that Singer had
20 forcefully expressed his disagreement with the Chief Justice s attempts to unlawfull
21 meddle in public-defense administration, but also that he expressed such
22 disagreement at all. Singer reminded Ramfjord that OPDS was supposed to be
23 independent, and that the Chief Justice was neither of their bosses.
24 53. Singer and Ramfjord exchanged emails over the next couple of days. The
25 two remained in disagreement Singer believed he had justifiably pushed back
26 against the Chief Justice s attempts to improperl overstep her authorit and
27 interfere in public defense-affairs; Ramfjord believed Singer had been disrespectful
28
PAGE 18- COMPLAINT
 1 to the Chief Justice and created a rift between OPDS and the judicial s stem but
2 they agreed that Singer and the Chief Justice should try to patch things up so that
3 they could continue to work together. Singer suggested that he meet with the Chief
4 Justice and apologize regarding his forceful tone, and that he would be more conscious
5 to be less forceful and remain courteous and professional with everyone.
6 54. Arranging this meeting took quite some time. Ramfjord initially insisted
7 on attending himself, but then eventually relented. And meanwhile the Chief Justice
8 suggested that the PDSC schedule an executive session at which she could air her
9 grievances with Singer. Singer did not object to this, and the executive session was
10 eventually scheduled for mid- to late-May 2022.
11 55. In or around late April or early May 2022, Singer and the Chief Justice
12 met, one-on-one, in her chambers in Salem. The conversation lasted more than three
13 hours, and was civil and courteous throughout, on both sides. Singer apologized for
14 the manner in which he had expressed his disagreement with the Chief Justice, and
15 she accepted that apology and said they would move on from the experience. But
16 Singer said that he stood by the message he was trying to send: He needed
17 independence to function properly, and her attempts to fix the unrepresented-
18 defendant problem which Singer said were well-intentioned threatened his ability
19 to fix the long-term, systemic issues with Oregon public defense in a sustainable way.
20 Ultimately, Singer told her, they both needed to stay in their own lanes for the system
21 to work as it should.
22 56. The Chief Justice told Singer that his initial comment about staying in
23 her lane had made her very angry, and it appeared that his second attempt had upset
24 her as well.
25 57. I am the Chief Justice of Oregon, she said. I don t have an lanes.
26 ///
27 ///
28
PAGE 19- COMPLAINT
 1 Singer Resists Attempts to Force His Own Staff to Handle Cases Outside
2 Their Competencies
3 58. On May 17, 2022, a putative class-action lawsuit was filed against the
4 Governor and Singer in their official capacities, alleging that Oregon was
5 unconstitutionally depriving people including some jailed people of their right to
6 counsel. By June 2022, Singer and his staff had made significant progress expanding
7 attorney capacity and were in the process of negotiating between 150 and 200
8 contracts with defense providers across the State. But severe problems, of course,
9 remained, including many indigent defendants facing criminal charges without an
10 attorney. Despite all of this, Ramfjord and the Chief Justice insisted on holding their
11 scheduled executive session. Singer worried that this session was no longer a good
12 idea given the lawsuit and his role negotiating contracts with competitive bidders,
13 it was important that everyone understand that he had full authority, and there could
14 be no conceivable urgency to reporting an apology he had already given and the Chief
15 Justice had already accepted but Singer nonetheless agreed to attend the session.
16 59. But in the days leading up to this executive session another problem
17 presented itself. The judges of the Circuit Court for Marion County, frustrated that
18 OPDS had refused to force attorneys to work unreasonable hours or represent
19 unreasonable numbers of clients, began involuntarily appointing attorneys from the
20 OPDS appellate division and general counsel s office to serious criminal cases. Singer
21 believed these appointments were unethical and unlawful, and they were. The
22 attorneys whom the Marion County judges were forcing to represent clients accused
23 of crimes already carried full workloads and, therefore, forcing them to handle more
24 cases constituted a violation of the Oregon Rules of Professional Conduct and violated
25 the Constitutional rights of the clients to whose cases they were appointed.
26 Furthermore, the full-time attorneys at OPDS are specialists in appellate practice,
27 providing ethical advice, or negotiating contracts. Most have never handled a trial-
28
PAGE 20- COMPLAINT
 1 level case, let alone a trial. Some were only a year a two removed from law school or
2 an appellate-court clerkship. And the Marion County judges were appointing these
3 people to serious felony matters without any supervision or their consent.
4 60. On June 7, 2022, Singer emailed Ramfjord, the Chief Justice, and Cozine
5 to tell them about the Marion Count Judges actions. I know that all of us are keenl
6 aware of that there are many clients with pending criminal matters who are without
7 counsel . . . and all of us have been working extremely hard to solve the problem.
8 [But] this is simpl[y] not an acceptable way to address this problem. The problem is
9 a systemic one. There simply are not a sufficient number of public defense attorneys
10 and public defense attorney hours to properly and ethically represent the clients who
11 are entitled to counsel at state expense. But we are not going to solve this problem by
12 taking the very people who are working to solve the problem statewide and assigning
13 them to individual cases in a particular county. While we can and will litigate the
14 many legal issues and problems with the assignments of counsel, the one thing we
15 can be sure of is that this will not speed the process of securing actual counsel for
16 these clients. It will only slow the process down as limited and valuable time and
17 resources not only at PDSC/OPDS but also the courts are wasted litigating the
18 assignment of attorneys who clearly do not have the time and capacity to actually
19 represent the clients in trial level cases . . . . I have litigated these issues in other
20 jurisdictions many, many, many times. It ALWAYS and invariably ends up the same
21 way. There is a media circus. Neither the courts, the public defense system, the
22 legislature, or anyone else in government looks good or wins. And it NEVER results
23 in speeding up the process of getting the unrepresented clients actual public defense
24 attorne s who can represent them.
25 61. The Chief Justice wrote back later the same da . She said that [t]he
26 problem is a difficult one for sure and offered to talk about all possibilities that
27 might help ou to provide law ers for people with a right to them. She then asked
28
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 1 some questions including: Have ou had a chance to cost out what it would take to
2 hire and retain felony-qualified lawyers? Have you had a chance to determine
3 whether you can fund added capacity for MCAD [?] or the Marion county PD office?
4 Do you have a list of private attorneys who are qualified to do criminal work in
5 Marion? Are you working on that list? Can you expand it? Are you using volunteers
6 in Marion . . . ? Could you make a more concerted effort? Hire a supervisor? Where
7 do ou stand on hiring case managers? Could that help in Marion?
8 62. This response was remarkable. First, it expressed no concern
9 whatsoever regarding the fact that full-time attorneys with a full-time workload who
10 worked directly for Singer himself were being forced by judges to handle cases outside
11 their competency, something that Singer had just reported to be unethical, likely
12 illegal, and likely to result in time-consuming litigation that would distract from real
13 efforts to address the problem. Second, as the chief judicial officer of the state, the
14 Chief Justice has the responsibility and almost certainly the practical power to
15 ensure that the Circuit Courts are complying with the law. That she would respond
16 to a message like Singer s without indicating that she would put a stop to the judges
17 appointments was very concerning to Singer.
18 63. Singer emailed Ramfjord immediatel : I m sorr but I m just
19 speechless. This does not have anything to do with the issues at hand. The issue is
20 that Marion county circuit court judges appointing OPDS appellate attorneys to
21 individual trial level cases. This is not 1 or 2 cases. This is lots of cases. The attorneys
22 are IRATE. They are ready to file judicial fitness complaints against a large number
23 of Marion county judges. The bottom line is that we can work on trying to find
24 attorneys for unrepresented clients or we can litigate the appointments of OPDS
25 attorne s to these cases. We CANNOT do both. It s 1 or the other.
26 64. Singer, Ramfjord, the Chief Justice, and Cozine met on June 9th to
27 discuss the Marion County issue. Singer maintained an even, polite tone throughout,
28
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 1 but he expressed his strong disagreement with the Marion Count judges actions,
2 noting that they were unethical and illegal. Singer asked how the Chief Justice would
3 have reacted if the judges had appointed her staff attorne s, or someone in Co ine s
4 office, to serious felony cases.
5 65. Neither the Chief Justice nor Cozine answered the question. Instead,
6 they asked Singer about a single, individual attorney who was supposedly willing to
7 take cases in Marion County but had for some reason been unable to secure a contract
8 with OPDS. The Chief Justice asked whether this was in retaliation for the
9 appointment of OPDS law ers. Singer said that the issue wasn t retaliation ; his
10 full-time staff simply did not have time to litigate the issue of their own illegal
11 appointments while also trying to solve the crisis in Oregon public defense statewide.
12 Ramfjord and the Chief Justice Twice Press the Commission to Fire Singer
13 And Fail Both Times
14 66. Meanwhile, as explained above, one of Singer s main roles as Director of
15 OPDS was to negotiate contracts with providers to represent criminal defendants. In
16 that capacity, Singer traveled around the state to help improve the quality of service
17 that criminal defendants were receiving from providers.
18 67. On one such trip, to Eastern Oregon, Singer and his staff were invited
19 to the home of one of the providers for dinner. Given the distance to the nearest town
20 and the lack of appropriate meeting locations, the attorne s home was the onl
21 practicable meeting place for dinner. Generally, state employees are forbidden to
22 accept gifts from state contractors, so one of the attorneys who joined Singer on the
23 trip sought advice from the general counsel of OPDS regarding whether it would be
24 permissible for the team to have dinner at the provider s home. After that
25 conversation, Singer and the other attorneys felt comfortable with dinner. Further,
26 although it was not necessary, out of a sense of hospitality and to avoid even a hint
27 ///
28
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 1 of impropriety, Singer and his colleagues also contributed food and drink to the
2 meeting such that the expenditures on supplies would offset each other.
3 68. Singer and his staff had a pleasant dinner at this attorne s home and
4 then returned to the motel they were staying. The following morning, Singer and a
5 member of his staff on the trip had an 8:00 AM video conference meeting with the
6 contracts team at OPDS. Singer began the meeting on his cell phone sitting in the
7 lobby of the motel, but the lobby soon became too noisy, so Singer asked the staff
8 member also at the motel if she was on the call on her computer. She said yes, so
9 Singer asked if he could join her on the call on her computer. She said yes, and he
10 asked what room she was in then walked to her room and continued the video
11 conference call. During this entire time, Singer was on video with the rest of the
12 contracts team back in Salem.
13 69. Evidently at some point during the call, Singer s colleague at the motel
14 mentioned that the team on the trip had dinner at the attorne s house the night
15 before and that the attorney had grilled steaks.
16 70. Later that same morning, Singer s deput director, Brian Deforest,
17 texted Singer to say he needed to speak to Singer prior to the group leaving the town
18 they were in. Singer called Deforest while seated in the driver s seat of the rental car
19 with the door open. Several of Singer s colleagues were on the sidewalk a few feet
20 away. Deforest accused Singer and his colleagues of illegally accepting steak dinners
21 from a state contractor and accused Singer of having inappropriately spent the night
22 in the motel room of his colleague and of having sexual relations with her. When
23 Singer attempted to explain the details of the potluck dinner and that general counsel
24 had indicated it was not a problem, and to clarify that the allegations regarding the
25 female subordinate were obviously baseless, Deforest launched into a profanity-laced
26 tirade against Singer. Singer again tried to calmly explain to Deforest that general
27 counsel saw no problem with the potluck dinner, and that he and his subordinate had
28
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 1 slept in separate rooms and were only in the same room when they were visible on a
2 video conference call together fully clothed in business attire and an appropriate
3 distance away from each other throughout and only because this small motel in a
4 remote rural town in Eastern Oregon did not have meeting rooms or a conference
5 center so there was no other quiet, private place to conduct business. Deforest shouted
6 further profanities at Singer. Singer advised Deforest, his subordinate, that it would
7 be best for Deforest to take some time to calm down and that they should resume the
8 call later that afternoon. Deforest responded with another expletive, and abruptly
9 hung up the phone on Singer.
10 71. Deforest did not report for work for the next several days and did not
11 communicate with Singer even though the office was very busy negotiating important
12 contracts at the time. Ever one at OPDS, including Deforest s administrative
13 assistant, said that they did not know whether Deforest was working from home
14 (which was permissible at the time due to Covid), on vacation, on sick leave, or even
15 where he was.
16 72. Almost immediately after Deforest hung up on Singer, during the drive
17 to the next meeting, Singer told other members of his staff about Deforest s bi arre
18 allegations. The general reaction was laughter, and Singer too thought the episode
19 mostly funny, although he was concerned about Deforest s bi arre reaction. His
20 conversation with Deforest was disturbing; the allegations Deforest raised were
21 conspiratorial, bizarre, and obviously false; and now Deforest had gone AWOL during
22 a crucial work period.
23 73. On June 10th, 2022, the PDSC finally convened to hold the executive
24 session at which the Chief Justice was to report her grievances with Singer. Since
25 this session had been scheduled, the Chief Justice had effectively ignored the Marion
26 Count judges illegal appointments and instead had continued to insist that Singer
27 and his staff work to figure out ad hoc, temporary solutions to serious structural
28
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 1 problems. So Singer invited a few senior attorneys who were also his senior advisors
2 on legal issues to attend the meeting if they wanted so that they could better
3 understand the political dynamics affecting OPDS. This was neither unusual nor
4 inconsistent with the purpose of the session OPDS attorneys had attended
5 executive sessions of the PDSC many times before, and the executive session was
6 scheduled to discuss a personnel matter concerning Singer and, therefore, the only
7 privacy concerns implicated were his and he was free to forfeit them as he saw fit.
8 Indeed, when it comes to personnel matters, the employee has an absolute right
9 under Oregon law to insist that the meeting be a regular, open public meeting. This
10 makes it clear that any right to privacy belongs to the employee not the PDSC.
11 74. When the meeting began, Ramfjord was stuck in traffic driving from
12 Portland to Salem. The Chief Justice and one commissioner were present in person
13 along with Singer, OPDS general counsel, and several members of Singer s senior
14 legal staff, while the rest of the commissioners appeared by video, some from
15 Portland. While waiting for Ramfjord to arrive, the Chief Justice introduced herself
16 and chatted amiably with the senior attorneys. Both the Chief Justice and the OPDS
17 senior legal staff were smiling and laughing, and she seemed fully undisturbed by
18 their presence.
19 75. Ramfjord eventually arrived. When he entered the room and saw the
20 OPDS senior attorneys present, his face turned beet red and he immediately accused
21 Singer of sandbagging him b having them present. But Ramfjord had never
22 discussed with Singer who would be present at the meeting; senior staff and attorneys
23 had been present for previous executive sessions; and the only purpose for the
24 meeting was ostensibly for the Chief Justice to express negative views about Singer,
25 so if he was fine with his senior staff hearing criticism of his job performance why
26 would anyone else, including Ramfjord, have a problem with it?
27 ///
28
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 1 76. After angrily attacking Singer and claiming he had somehow acted
2 dishonestly, Ramfjord demanded that the senior attorneys leave the room. Ramfjord
3 alleged that the senior attorneys present were not there voluntarily but had been
4 bullied b Singer and forced to attend. When the attorne s were directl asked
5 whether they had been bullied or forced to attend or were there voluntarily, every
6 single one of them eagerly indicated they were present of their own free will. Several
7 laughed at the suggestion that Singer would or even could bully them into doing
8 anything. These attorneys had been hired by Singer specifically because they were
9 hard-boiled, experienced public defenders and trial attorneys known for their
10 independence.
11 77. Ramfjord called for a vote of the PDSC to remove them from the
12 executive session. That vote passed. Singer then requested that the executive session
13 be converted into a regular, open public meeting, as is his unqualified right under
14 Oregon law. OPDS general counsel, who was in the room, confirmed this.
15 78. Ramfjord demanded that Singer explain why he wanted the meeting to
16 be public. Singer explained that he wanted his staff to see the political dynamics
17 affecting the agency including how the Chief Justice viewed her role and how she
18 treated him. Singer also added that, in any event, he did not need a reason: the
19 session was executive and private only because a personnel matter was to be
20 discussed, and he was the employee at issue, thus giving him the absolute right to
21 convert the meeting to a public one for any reason. Regardless, Singer said, he could
22 not understand why Ramfjord had objected to the presence of the senior staff
23 attorneys in the first place. Singer pointed out that senior staff often attend executive
24 sessions, and that no one had told him not to invite anyone, and he could see no reason
25 why their presence would disrupt the purpose of the session, and there is none.
26 79. Ramfjord accused Singer of lying and said he no longer could trust him.
27 Ramfjord claimed that Singer invited his staff members to sandbag Ramfjord (how
28
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 1 or with what remains a mystery); that he knew all along that Ramfjord did not want
2 them there as evidenced by Singer having general counsel present with the authority
3 for Singer to require a public meeting (which, Ramfjord supposed, must have been
4 planned in advance); and that the whole exercise was somehow some sort of ruse to
5 trap the Chief Justice and Ramfjord into at least an unpleasant situation.
6 Throughout, Ramfjord, usually very controlled, raised his voice at Singer and turned
7 red on several occasions.
8 80. At some point during Ramfjord and Singer s back-and-forth, the Chief
9 Justice left the room and slammed the door behind her. Singer, although surprised
10 b Ramfjord s conduct and the Chief Justice s subsequent sudden turn from
11 exchanging pleasantries with his senior attorney staff to apparent anger at their
12 presence, nonetheless tried to calm the waters by agreeing to not exercise his right to
13 require an open, public meeting and to ask his senior staff attorneys to leave, which
14 they promptly did. Even though it had only been a couple of minutes and the Chief
15 Justice could not have been very far away, Ramfjord asserted that it was too late to
16 get the Chief Justice back so the meeting was adjourned.
17 81. The following day, Singer emailed Ramfjord asking that he apologize for
18 calling Singer a liar and for yelling at him. Singer explained that he had been
19 completely forthright about why his senior attorneys were at the meeting, and that
20 once he realized the Chief Justice was upset which, because another commissioner
21 was seated between Singer and the Chief Justice, was unclear to Singer until she
22 stormed out of the room he agreed that they leave anyway even though he had an
23 unqualified right to demand their (or an one else s) presence.
24 82. Once it became clear to Singer after the meeting that Ramfjord had
25 spoken to Deforest about his spurious allegations, Singer recognized that Ramfjord
26 may have planned to sandbag Singer by raising Deforest s ridiculous allegations at
27 the executive session, and the presence of Singer s senior attorne s complicated
28
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 1 matters because they may have been witnesses. There is no other reason for Ramfjord
2 to care about the presence of senior staff attorneys if all that was to take place was
3 the airing of the Chief Justice s complaints about Singer about which ever one was
4 already aware. And Ramfjord admitted that he had spoken to Deforest about
5 Deforest s wild allegations before the executive session. Had Ramfjord raised
6 Deforest s complaints at the session, he could have seriousl jeopardi ed the fairness
7 of any resultant investigation.
8 83. Singer had a right to know the allegations made against him. In an
9 email, Singer said that a full and independent investigation should be conducted into
10 all allegations against him something that he thoroughly welcomed, for the
11 allegations were preposterous, and even a cursory inquiry would debunk them
12 immediately.
13 84. Nevertheless, without advising Singer of the specific allegations against
14 him and the basis for them, evidently without conducting any investigation or inquiry
15 at all, and without giving Singer any opportunity to be heard, on June 15, 2022,
16 Ramfjord called an executive session of the PDSC. At that session, Ramfjord and the
17 Chief Justice evidently attempted to convince the PDSC to fire Singer because of his
18 supposed misconduct in having dinner at the attorne s house and sitting in the same
19 room as a subordinate. The Chief Justice's and Ramfjord's efforts to have the PDSC
20 fire or take any action against Singer garnered little, if any, support.
21 85. This attempt was transparently pretextual and the allegations against
22 Singer were sill . Ramfjord and the Chief Justice s true purpose in attempting to
23 remove him was that they disagreed with his complaints about and opposition to the
24 Chief Justice s attempts to manage public-defense affairs, the Marion County judges
25 illegal appointments, and the Chief Justice s attempts to get unqualified or
26 overburdened attorneys, law students, and the like to represent indigent criminal
27 defendants without counsel.
28
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 1 86. The Chief Justice and Ramfjord spent the month of July demanding that
2 Singer solve the unrepresented-defendant problem and holding what had historically
3 been monthly PDSC meetings on a weekly basis. These weekly meetings left Singer
4 and the agency little time to engage in and develop thoughtful, coherent, systemic
5 planning to address the significant structural deficiencies in Oregon s public defense
6 system.
7 87. Still, by the end of July, Singer, in a matter of just a few weeks, produced
8 a thorough, 16-page memorandum complete with supporting appendices putting
9 forth a detailed and specific four-part plan, complete with a range of options on each
10 component, to address the issue of unrepresented clients in the immediate and near
11 term, and to do so in a manner consistent with the overall structural and systemic
12 changes needed to address the fundamental, foundational problems with Oregon s
13 public defense system.
14 88. Nonetheless, without giving Singer s detailed plan and its various
15 components an opportunity to work, in early August 2022, Ramfjord and the Chief
16 Justice again tried to convince the PDSC to fire Singer. On August 8th, Ramfjord
17 posted a public notice that the PDSC would hold an executive session two days later,
18 on August 10th, to discuss personnel issues related to Singer. Singer requested, as
19 was his absolute right, that that meeting be converted to an open, public one, and it
20 was. Letters of support for Singer came in from across the state. For the first time
21 in my time in public defense . . . we have a director who seems to hear the voice of
22 rural Oregon s public defense community, understands their needs, and responds to
23 those needs, wrote Erik Swallow, a chief public defender in Roseburg.
24 89. The meeting itself was contentious. Ramfjord provided the
25 Commissioners with a 27-page brief arguing for Singer s removal. Ramfjord provided
26 the brief to Singer less than a day before the meeting and told Singer that his
27 response would be limited to ten minutes orally at the meeting the next day. At the
28
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 1 meeting, Singer defended his record, noting that he had improved attorney capacity
2 and had begun to make some changes, but also that he had been in the job less than
3 a ear. He asked for more time to make improvements. As for his st le, about which
4 Ramfjord complained to the Commission, Singer said that I need to be more
5 diplomatic, read the room better, be a better listener. I m somebod who s just
6 comfortable in conflict . . . . Obviously, Oregon has a different approach and I need to
7 adjust and adapt to that. Singer noted that he d apologi ed to ever one who
8 complained about his st le and that he did not believe he had an irreparabl bad
9 relationship with any state legislator or presiding judge.
10 90. The PDSC declined the Chief Justice s and Ramfjord s request to fire
11 Singer. The vote was 4-4, with one member absent. The PDSC also declined to take
12 any other action against Singer including placing him on administrative leave,
13 placing him on probation, issuing a reprimand, or requiring him to take any other
14 actions.
15 The Chief Justice Dissolves the Commission And Reconstitutes it to Fire
16 Singer
17 91. Just three business days after her second attempt to have the PDSC fire
18 Singer failed, the Chief Justice fired ever member of the PDSC. As provided in ORS
19 151.213, she wrote in a letter, I am exercising m authorit to remove all current
20 members of the Commission, effective tomorrow. She then invited an one who
21 wished to continue serving to reappl . M purpose in reconstituting the Commission
22 is to ensure that it provides the right leadership, combining knowledge, experience,
23 and commitment to public defense with knowledge, experience, and understanding of
24 state governmental operations, to effectuate the changes we need to move forward. I
25 never anticipated exercising this authority, but this issue is too important, and the
26 need for change is too urgent, to delay. We must accelerate our work and collaborate
27 with the executive and legislative branches and the public defense community to
28
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 1 create a better system for public defense providers and fulfill our responsibilities to
2 the people of Oregon.
3 92. The next day, the Chief Justice announced that she was reappointing
4 five members of the original commission and appointing four new ones. Four of the
5 five remaining commissioners had voted to remove Singer.
6 93. The Chief Justice appointed the four new commissioners to new, four-
7 year terms.
8 94. The Chief Justice did not specify which new commissioners were
9 replacing which former ones.
10 95. On August 18th, after another contentious public session, the newly
11 constituted PDSC fired Singer. With one commissioner unavailable, the vote was 6-
12 2. Two new commissioners voted to fire Singer, and two voted to place him on
13 administrative leave; the four commissioners who originally voted to remove Singer
14 did so again the second time.
15 96. At least three members of the commission (Ludwig, Winemiller, and
16 Williams) cast their votes to fire Singer from Multnomah County and at least one
17 member of the commission (Parrish-Taylor) cast her vote note to fire Singer from
18 Multnomah county.
19 97. Ramfjord drafted his brief to the commission in Multnomah county.
20 Claims for Relief
21 Claim One: Whistleblower Retaliation –ORS 659A.203
22 98. Plaintiff incorporates all prior paragraphs by reference.
23 99. Singer s man reports to the Chief Justice, Ramfjord, and the PDSC
24 regarding the Chief Justice s attempts to manage public-defense services in violation
25 of ORS 151.213 and the unconstitutional, illegal, and unethical state of public defense
26 in Oregon constituted disclos[ure] . . . of . . . information that [Singer] reasonably
27 believed is evidence of . . . [a] violation of federal and state law.
28
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 1 100. Singer s man reports to the Chief Justice, Ramfjord, and the PDSC
2 regarding the Chief Justice s attempts to manage public-defense services in violation
3 of ORS 151.213 and the unconstitutional, illegal, and unethical state of public defense
4 in Oregon constituted disclos[re] . . . of . . . information that [Singer] reasonabl
5 believed is evidence of . . . [m]ismanagement.
6 101. The PDSC was motivated b Singer s reports of violation of federal and
7 state law, and of mismanagement, when it voted to fire him.
8 102. Defendants actions caused Plaintiff to suffer economic damages in the
9 amount of at least $30,000, increasing every month throughout trial.
10 103. Defendants actions have also caused Plaintiff emotional distress and
11 suffering in an amount to be determined at trial, no more than $2,400,000.
12 104. Pursuant to ORS 659A.885, Plaintiff is entitled to recover actual
13 damages, reasonable attorney fees, and costs.
14 Claim Two: Wrongful Discharge
15 105. Plaintiff incorporates all prior paragraphs by reference.
16 106. Singer s firing violated Oregon public polic as reflected in ORS 151.213
17 because it constituted the exercise of administrative authorit and supervision b
18 the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court over the commission and emplo ees of the
19 commission.
20 107. In the alternative, or additionall , Singer s firing violated Oregon public
21 polic as reflected in ORS 151.216, which requires that the PDSC [e]stablish and
22 maintain a public defense system that ensures the provision of public defense services
23 consistent with . . . national standards of justice, including the ABA Ten Principles
24 of a Public Defense Delivery System, which requires that the leader of a public-
25 defense system be independent of the judiciary.
26 108. In the alternative, or additionall , Singer s firing violated Oregon public
27 policy as reflected in ORS 151.213(3) because the Chief Justice appointed new
28
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 1 commissioners to vacant seats for terms longer than the unexpired remainder of the
2 terms of the departing commissioners and because she did not specify which
3 commissioners were being appointed to which vacant seats.
4 109. Defendants actions caused Plaintiff to suffer economic damages in the
5 amount of at least $30,000, increasing every month throughout trial.
6 110. Defendants actions have also caused Plaintiff emotional distress and
7 suffering in an amount to be determined at trial, no more than $2,400,000.
8 Prayer for Relief
9 WHEREFORE, Plaintiff prays for his costs and disbursements incurred herein
10 and for the following in accordance with the proof at trial:
11 Economic damages;
12 Non-economic damages;
13 Reinstatement or future lost wages;
14 Reasonable attorne s fees and costs;
15 Prejudgment and post judgment interest as appropriate and allowed by
16 law;
17 On all claims, as applicable, amounts necessary to offset the income tax
18 consequences of receiving a lump-sum payment, rather than receiving
19 payment of wages over the applicable time frame;
20 A declaration that Defendant has violated Plaintiff s rights under ORS
21 659A and an order requiring Defendant to take appropriate steps to
22 make Plaintiff whole;
23 A declaration that the Chief Justice s appointment of commissioners to
24 unspecified vacant seats for terms in excess of the unexpired terms of the
25 vacant seats violated Oregon law; and
26 Any other relief this Court may determine to be fair and just.
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 1 Respectfully submitted,
2
s/J. Ashlee Albies
3 J. Ashlee Albies, OSB No. 051846
ALBIES, STARK & GUERRIERO
4 1 SW Columbia St., Ste. 1850
5 Portland, OR 97214
[email protected]
6 (503) 308-4770
7 Charles Gerstein
8 (pro hac vice application forthcoming)
GERSTEIN HARROW LLP
9 810 7th Street NE, Suite 301
Washington, DC 20002
10 [email protected]
11 (202) 670-4809

12 Jason Harrow
(pro hac vice application forthcoming)
13 GERSTEIN HARROW LLP
14 3243B S. La Cienega Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90016
15 [email protected]
(323) 744-5293
16

17 Attorneys for Plaintiff

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