Rape victim's family to sue Lane County
EUGENE, Ore. (AP) — The family of a woman who was raped by a man released early from the Lane County Jail has filed notice it plans to sue the county.
The family filed an Oregon tort notice stating that it will seek damages against the county and individual employees for an assault by Paul John Reid Dawson that left the victim "severely injured," The Register-Guard newspaper reported.
Dawson should have been in jail at the time of the attack, but the county, citing a lack of staffing and capacity, released him just hours into a one-year sentence he had received Nov. 20 for a theft and assault.
Dawson, 23, was sentenced last month to more than 27 years in prison for robbing and sexually attacking the woman Jan. 2.
County Administrator Jeff Spartz declined comment on the tort notice Monday.
The county had been releasing inmates early for years, but the volume starting growing last summer when staffing was cut because of the pending demise of federal timber payments used to help pay for the jail.
A last-minute renewal of the payments last fall led to disagreements about whether to use the money to restore jail capacity or instead save it to address other county financial problems.
Lane County Circuit Court judges urged the board to restore jail capacity, but the county commissioners said it would be fiscally irresponsible to spend the county's share of the timber money as if it will go on forever.
The county board, in the face of public and political pressure, voted in June to provide money to reopen 84 shuttered jail beds.
Eugene attorney Greg Veralrud, a former deputy district attorney and past president of the Oregon Criminal Defense Lawyers, said the county faces minimal legal exposure when it comes to its budget decisions. Otherwise, he said, lawsuits would follow every time someone in the community felt a service had been shortchanged.
He said the county faces more legal risk if it can be proved that the system it uses to assess which inmates to release early is faulty or was used improperly. Following the Dawson episode, public safety officials and commissioners sparred over the adequacy of the risk assessment method used by the sheriff's office to determine which inmates should be freed.
(Copyright 2009 The Associated Press)
