LONG CREEK — Early last month, Long Creek resident Carmen Vaughan learned that the man who had sexually abused two of her daughters as children years ago, the man she thought would be safely locked in prison until 2033, might be getting out early.

“We are horrified and feel re-victimized,” said Vaughan, whose daughters are now grown and living elsewhere.

Robert Joiner, who was 53 at the time, was convicted of five counts of first-degree sodomy, one count of first-degree unlawful sexual penetration, and three counts of first-degree sexual abuse in Grant County Circuit Court. He was sentenced on Sept. 26, 2006, and has been incarcerated at Two Rivers Correctional Institution in Umatilla since then. He is now in his early 70s.

A recent U.S. Supreme Court decision has led to the possibility of Joiner being released six years earlier than expected. Some of Joiner’s counts were adjudicated with non-unanimous verdicts, which the Supreme Court in 2020 ruled unconstitutional in a case known as Ramos v. Louisiana. Two states, Oregon and Louisiana, had allowed non-unanimous verdicts until then.

A subsequent Oregon Supreme Court decision in 2022, Watkins v. Ackley, held that the Ramos ruling could be applied retroactively to cases decided by non-unanimous guilty verdicts before 2020 in the state of Oregon. Because of these two decisions, Joiner may now be released from prison in 2027 instead of 2033, unless the case can be reheard.

Vaughan and her daughters, Cassandra Ross, now 37, and Carrisa Forrest, 38, are seeking a retrial in hopes of keeping Joiner from getting out earlier because of the change in law. Vaughan said she’s been losing sleep since learning that Joiner might qualify for early release, while Forrest has been experiencing nightmares.

“This is another deep failure of our justice systems in Oregon and in a broad context on a national level, and it re-victimizes victims and survivors all over again,” Ross said. “It’s created a floodgate of opportunity for people who should remain in jail despite the fact that the law is enabling them retroactive rights forever.”

Missing evidence

Vaughan, Ross and their attorney met with Grant County District Attorney Jim Carpenter on Oct. 12 to discuss their desire for a retrial.

Carpenter said that while he believes Joiner is absolutely guilty of the crimes he’s been convicted for, he does not intend to take up the case as a prosecutor because the original evidence from the case has been lost or disposed of. He said he tried to obtain the evidence from local law enforcement and searched the Grant County District Attorney’s Office archives but was unable to locate it.

“A defense attorney is going to demand that earlier evidence and they’re going to move to dismiss the case when it can’t be delivered,” Carpenter said. “And a judge might — and, in fact, a judge probably would — consider doing that. He’s going to say, ‘You had all this stuff closer in time, and where is it? You can’t produce it.’”

Carpenter said he has contacted the Oregon Department of Justice to request a review of the case and the appointment of a special prosecutor, should the state agency decide to do so.

“I’ve actually reached out to the Department of Justice and asked them if they would do a D.A. assist and appoint a special prosecutor,” he said. “It doesn’t mean the case is going to be retried. It means that person would review it and make a decision as to whether it merited retrial.”

Roy Kaufmann, a spokesman for the state Justice Department, confirmed that Carpenter has asked for assistance regarding the Joiner case and said the agency will provide an update when it makes a decision.

Joiner’s attorney could not be reached for comment.

Historical abuses

According to a statement from the Oregon Innocence Project, an inmate advocacy group whose mission is to exonerate wrongful convictions, Oregon’s former non-unanimous jury law stemmed from “our state’s shameful history of anti-Semitism, anti-Catholicism, and anti-immigrant hate.”

Prior to the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Ramos v. Louisiana in 2020, Oregon had allowed guilty verdicts when at least 10 of 12 jurors agreed that the defendant had committed a crime.

“It has long been a concern of ours that non-unanimity increases the risk of innocent Oregonians being wrongfully convicted,” the Oregon Innocence Project said in a statement on the ruling in 2020.

Aliza Kaplan, a professor at Lewis & Clark Law School in Portland and a legal expert familiar with the issues posed by non-unanimous jury verdicts, said if someone is convicted unconstitutionally, the crime of which they were convicted is, in a legal sense, irrelevant.

“It doesn’t matter the details of the specific case — they’re in prison unconstitutionally,” she said.

“While I understand that in any individual case there’s going to be lots of feelings and issues, this isn’t about any particular case,” Kaplan said. “This issue is that people were unconstitutionally convicted — period. And so I think it’s important to look at it first like that.”

Kaplan pointed out that, when a conviction is vacated under the new rule, the state has the option to try the case again.

“When that happens, there’s going to be people who are re-convicted,” she said. “There’s going to be people, as in this one where the D.A.s don’t have the evidence to convict them again, and there are going to be a lot of deals being made, which is happening in a lot of counties to get convictions, rather than go back to trial. They’re going to make deals, and that’s what’s happening in a lot of these cases.”

In Oregon, there were nearly 500 cases that were on direct appellate review that were not yet final when Ramos was announced, in addition to more than 200 post-conviction cases which were final when the non-unanimous jury rule was changed by the U.S. Supreme Court, Kaufmann said.

“There were 471 direct criminal appeals where at least one conviction was reversed based on a non-unanimous jury,” Kaufmann said. “Those cases were remanded to the criminal trial court for further proceedings. In post-conviction, we currently have 216 cases where at least one conviction was reversed based on a non-unanimous jury verdict. Many, but not all, of those cases were remanded to the criminal trial court for further proceedings.”

Unintended consequences

Vaughan and Ross said they understand the intention of helping the wrongfully convicted, but they believe the decision also has the consequence of helping the guilty evade proper justice.

“It’s a blanket,” Vaughan said. “It just covers everyone, instead of taking it case by case and looking at violent predators like Robert Joiner and saying, ‘No, we’re not going to let him out.’”

Ross said ultimately she hoped there could be more structure to the implementation of the law change.

“The intended outcome was to support those marginalized communities who were wrongfully convicted — not people who are actually guilty and deserve to stay in prison based upon the charges they had at the time they were convicted.”

The Blue Mountain Eagle generally does not publish the names of sex crime victims. In this case, however, the family wanted to speak out on the record about their objections to their abuser’s early release.