Noelle Crombie

6 days ago | chronline.com | Noelle Crombie

Jessica Kampfe, who has led the state’s troubled public defense system, was fired Thursday by Gov. Tina Kotek. Kampfe had served as executive director of the Oregon Public Defense Commission since 2022. A former public defender, Kampfe previously managed Multnomah Defenders Inc., a nonprofit law firm that provides defense attorneys in Portland. “It is unacceptable that more than 4,000 defendants in Oregon do not have attorneys assigned,” Kotek said in announcing the shakeup.

6 days ago | oregonlive.com | Noelle Crombie

The Oregon Department of Corrections has significantly overhauled the longstanding and notoriously powerful panels that decide whether prisoners get off-site specialty medical care, the agency’s chief medical officer said Thursday. Dr. Michael Seale oversees the delivery of medical care to Oregon’s roughly 12,000 prisoners.

1 week ago | oregonlive.com | Noelle Crombie

Jessica Kampfe, who has led the state’s troubled public defense system, was fired Thursday by a top aide to Gov. Tina Kotek. Kampfe served as executive director of the Oregon Public Defense Commission since 2022. A former public defender, Kampfe previously managed Multnomah Defenders Inc., a nonprofit law firm that provides defense attorneys in Portland. “It is unacceptable that more than 4,000 defendants in Oregon do not have attorneys assigned,” Kotek said in announcing the shakeup.

1 week ago | oregonlive.com | Noelle Crombie

A Coos County man whose violent rampage left his father and three other people dead in 2021 was sentenced Monday to the Oregon State Hospital after a judge found him guilty except for insanity. The ruling brings to a close the complex and long-running case of Oen Nicholson who was accused of killing his 83-year-old father, Charles Nicholson, a retired couple, Anthony and Linda Oyster, and a marijuana store employee, Jennifer Davison.

1 week ago | oregonlive.com | Noelle Crombie

A woman was convicted Friday in Los Angeles court in the murder of her celebrity hairstylist husband — a brazen killing carried out with help from a former Oregon juvenile probation officer. A jury found Monica Sementilli, 51, guilty of directing her lover to kill her husband, Fabio Sementilli, at the couple’s luxury Woodland Hills home in 2017. The high-profile case drew intense media attention.