As Benton County Circuit Court Judge Joan Demarest prepares to retire, Jeri Wall remembered standing before her and crying.
People often shed tears as judges send them to jail. This time, however, the judge cried too. “She cried with me as she sentenced me and told me that she believes in second chances,” Wall said.
Suddenly, Wall was no longer a drug addict to be processed and punished. She was a human being worthy of empathy. She was someone to believe in. Wall said she vowed not to let Judge Demarest down.
She returned to Benton County’s drug treatment court June 24 to let Demarest know how she’s doing. And she’s doing well.
“I’ve been clean for six months,” she said before court convened. “I’m killing it, and I’m not looking back. I was tired. I was really tired. I was defeated. I was in my own way. I’m doing a lot outside of treatment court to get out of my way because no one was coming to save me, and I was getting sick and tired of what I’ve always gotten.”
Drug treatment courts are rarely festive.
“SHE HAS A REALLY BIG HEART”
Stone-faced judges call defendants forward to provide updates on their progress before dispassionately telling them what comes next. As Wall approached the bench, Demarest invited everyone in the courtroom to join her in a round of applause.
The other defendants received applause as well. Depending on where they were in their treatment, they received celebratory bracelets, stickers and gift baskets. Oh, and pizza. At one point, three large pizzas were delivered to the courtroom. Demarest called a recess so defendants, onlookers and officers of the court could enjoy a slice or two.
“She has a really big heart, and I think she really cares,” Wall said.
Even a defendant brought to the courtroom in handcuffs and orange prison scrubs expressed appreciation for Demarest putting him behind bars. “I want to thank you for putting me where I need to be,” he told her.
“IT HAD BEEN OLD WHITE GUYS”
After seven years serving in Position 3 of Oregon’s 21st Judicial District, Demarest said she needs to be somewhere else. She will step down Jan. 4, although she will continue to work part time with the county’s drug treatment court for two more years.
Demarest was appointed to the bench in April 2019 by then-Gov. Kate Brown. Most of Oregon’s judges at the time were older white men not given to throwing their defendants pizza parties. Brown set out to diversify the judiciary.
“It had been old white guys for, like, all of history,” Demarest said. “Gov. Brown completely changed that. She had a lot of years to appoint judges, and she took the opportunity to diversify the bench.”
She appointed 112 judges to Oregon’s trial, appellate and tax courts to reshape the bench to reflect the state’s demographics. She appointed 56 women, 27 people of color, two Native Americans, eight people who identify as LGBTQ+ and one person who identifies as non-binary.
Demarest said being a woman enables her to empathize more openly with defendants and strike a more celebratory tone in her courtroom. A male judge who dared to cry with a defendant would be roundly criticized. However, being a woman on the bench also comes with a price, she added.
“Most people I meet in the outside world are shocked that I’m a judge because I don’t really present as the stereotypical judge,” she said. “I’ve been met with a lot of challenges in terms of being treated fairly by staff, and it’s gotten to the point that there’s so much resistance to anything I want to do, it’s become clear this is not where I’m meant to be.”
Older white male judges usually receive automatic respect, Demarest said. Female judges often have to fight for it. “My theory is that it’s easy for staff to show deference to old white guys,” Demarest said. “It’s harder for staff to show deference to people who are more like them.”
She declined to go into specific instances of sexism she’s encountered, but she said most of it boils down to “his honor” failing to translate to “her honor.”
“It’s just push back, push back, push back,” she said. “It takes a lot out of your life. I want my time to be used effectively, and it’s not.”
“THAT’S WHY ALL THE WHOOP-WHOOP”
Demarest has been working in the Benton County court system, either as an attorney or as a judge, since she was in law school at the University of Oregon in the late 1990s. Being a female attorney was difficult as well, she said.
“The scope of acceptable behavior for a female attorney in court in front of a jury is narrow,” Demarest said. “A male attorney can get excited and slam his fist on the table, but if I do that, I’m being hysterical. I have to talk with my voice in a lower register.”
Demarest said her ability to display more empathy as a female judge has been a major asset for her in dealing with drug defendants.
“When I acknowledge their humanity, by observing something or telling them they’re doing a good job, you can see them just melt,” she said. “When they’re treated with respect and humanity, they completely shift. The judge’s approval or disapproval is so powerful. That robe is magic. It’s like a magic cape.”
She acknowledges that the addicts who come before her will likely relapse.
“I know now that relapse is a part of recovery, and we don’t terminate people just for using,” Demarest said. “We try everything first. We’ve also learned incentives are much more effective than sanctions, so that’s why all the whoop-whoop in the courtroom. That really works.”
“I WANTED HIM TO BE PUNISHED”
However, lest anyone think her soft on criminals, consider Shawn Wesley Field. He was sentenced to 46 years in prison in 2006 for beating his girlfriend’s 3-year-old child to death. Demarest was the prosecutor in the case.
She wanted him to rot for the rest of his life on death row. And she doesn’t even support the death penalty.
“I don’t think we should ever get to the question of whether or not someone should be killed for what they did when our system is so unfair with minorities, people with disabilities and poor people being sentenced to death,” she said. “I don’t think we should reach that part of the process until we have a perfectly just system.”
However, she knew people are never actually executed in Oregon.
She said seeking the death penalty gave her the opportunity to select jurors less likely to keep him off death row. She also wanted to keep him out of the general prison population where he could con his fellow inmates and generally game the system.
“I wanted him to be punished, and on death row, he would be punished — even though he wouldn’t be put to death,” Demarest said. “Because of that, I felt OK seeking the death penalty.”
The jury chose against the death penalty. Instead, Field died 10 years after going to prison from HIV, cancer and hepatitis. Too bad, Demarest said. “He should have lived longer and suffered more.”
Even though she didn’t get Field sent to death row, her involvement in the case made an indelible mark on Oregon law with reverberations around the world. She and state Sen. Sara Gelser Blouin, D-Corvallis, served on the Corvallis School Board together and teamed up to draft Karly’s Law.
Named after the murdered child, Karly’s Law was enacted in 2007 and mandates that children with suspicious injuries during the course of an abuse investigation receive medical treatment within 48 hours. Oregon Department of Human Services staff and medical providers must assess the injuries. The law also sets other protocol and procedures if abuse is suspected.
Similar laws have been passed in other states and throughout the world.
“IT WAS A BIG WAKE-UP CALL FOR ME”
Although Demarest is proud of Karly’s Law and has no regrets about how she handled the Field case, she admitted she was overzealous at times during her years as a deputy district attorney for Benton County.
She remembers successfully prosecuting a man for burglary after he was found squatting in a vacant apartment. He used an electrical outlet, so she successfully argued that he stole electricity – resulting in a stiffer sentence.
Some 15 years later, she was working as a court-appointed defense attorney in Linn County. The same man became her client. This time, she listened to his story. “All of it was related to addiction, trauma and housing,” she said. “It was a big wake-up call for me. It helped open my eyes.”
She realized he wasn’t hurting anyone by squatting in that apartment. He was just trying to stay warm and dry. A stiff jail sentence was not the answer, Demarest said. “We know now that prison will not stop criminal behavior,” she said. “It will pause it.”
“I WANTED TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE”
Demarest, 56, has lived in the Corvallis area since moving to Oregon with her family in 1979. She earned her bachelor’s degree from Smith College in 1993 and initially thought about working in politics.
“I started working in politics because that’s what my family heritage was,” Demarest said. “I wanted to make a difference and pursue social justice. That’s always been my motivation, to make things better.”
However, politics proved too frustrating.
“I didn’t like how removed I was from where the change was supposed to happen,” she said. “I was working hard to get people elected who were supposed to make a difference, but my efforts were too far removed.”
She earned her law degree from the University of Oregon in 1998.
While in her second year of law school, she began working with the Benton County District Attorney’s Office. She returned after graduation to serve as a deputy district attorney.
She worried she wasn’t good enough to be a trial lawyer, especially after watching actor Susan Dey portray prosecutor Grace Van Owen on the TV show “LA Law.”
“Her closing arguments were so good,” Demarest said. “I thought I could never be like Grace Van Owen. Then I realized Grace Van Owen had script writers. I realized that maybe I could do that successfully.”
Soon she was a full-fledged trial lawyer.
“It was just so interesting to me,” she said. “I would tell people it’s like playing cops and robbers without getting shot. It’s fast-paced and fun, and you do have a lot of control. I could make happen what I thought was justice a lot of times.”
Looking back, she added, that’s when she started to get overzealous.
“For me, it was too much power without enough guidance, without enough mentoring, without enough wisdom,” she said. “However, I settled down over the years.”
“THEY CALLED ME THE NIGHT AVENGER”
After some 10 years with the district attorney’s office, Demarest focused on criminal defense and family law as well as victim advocacy. As a defense attorney, she would tuck in her children and visit her clients. “They called me the Night Avenger over at the Linn County Jail.”
She also left a lasting legacy in criminal defense law by defending drug suspects Travis Wilverding and Tracy Lynn Lienn of Albany in 2014. Police skirted around the need for a warrant by asking garbage collectors at Republic Services to pull the couple’s trash bin.
Demarest argued people have a right to privacy even when it comes to their garbage. “Yes, you put your trash on the corner, but you know it’s going to go into a truck with 300 other people’s garbage,” she said.
In State v. Lien and Wilverding, the Oregon Supreme Court ruled in 2019 that citizens retain a constitutionally protected privacy interest in their curbside garbage — overturning 50 years of precedent.
Then Demarest was offered a black robe herself by Gov. Brown.
“PEOPLE MAKE MISTAKES”
“As a trial attorney, and as an attorney who is always arguing about justice, you spend your career trying to convince others to do the right thing,” she said. “If you have the opportunity to decide the right thing, that’s a pretty great opportunity.”
Even though she’s ready to step down, Demarest said she’s proud of the humanity she’s been able to bring to the justice system in Benton County – especially the drug treatment court.
“People make mistakes,” she said. “People are always here for their worst days, not their best days. I just acknowledge that because they feel so much shame. I saw it make such a difference when I acknowledged them as people. I really do get a lot of fulfilment out of treating people with humanity, even people who have done horrible things.”
Wall said she cannot begin to calculate the difference Demarest’s attitude has made in her life.
“I have a pretty extensive record,” she said. “I’m no stranger to the court system. I stood up and took full accountability. I didn’t give any victim’s statements. I lost my brother a while back but I didn’t want to tell her that. I knew that would take away from my accountability. I told her I was really tired of being in courtrooms.”
Ultimately, Demarest said, people make the difference in their own lives. As a judge, she was just there to help.
“Freedom, by definition, is people realizing they’re their own leader,” she told the people gathered in her courtroom June 24.
By Tom Henderson
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