The Ghosts of Crimes Past

Is it a crime to want justice?

Christmas came early this year to hundreds of Oregon state prisoners who were granted clemency by Gov. Kate Brown.

Yet there was a dreariness in the Mayfair Ballroom at the Benson Hotel in downtown Portland on Friday, when the Oregon Criminal Defense Lawyers Association met for their winter conference.

It’s a low-ceilinged ballroom with poor lighting and drab browns that couldn’t be perked up by an obligatory Christmas tree.

For the one-hour-and-fifteen-minute presentation I sat through, the only moment of cheer came when Sterling Cunio took over during the Criminal Justice Reform Panel emceed by Lewis & Clark Law Professor Aliza Kaplan.

When he was a month away from turning 17, Cunio and an 18-year-old friend, Wilford Dean Hill kidnapped, robbed and murdered Bridget Camber and Ian Dahl, a young couple engaged to be married. Dahl was kissing his 18-year-old fiancé good night in the parking lot of his Salem, Ore., apartment when Cunio and Hill surprised them.

They kidnapped the couple at gunpoint and forced Camber into the passenger seat of her car and Dahl into the back seat. With Cunio driving, they headed to a rural area outside Albany. On the drive, they ordered Camber and Dahl to give up their wallets, jewelry and other personal items. They tied them up and forced them into a ditch. Hill shot and killed Camber, while Cunio shot and killed Dahl.

Camber, the daughter of a school teacher, was attending Chemeketa Community College and hoped to become a counselor. Dahl had just been accepted into an electrician apprenticeship. In the meantime, they were working at Pietro’s Pizza in East Salem.

Of course, none of these details were mentioned in the discussion on Friday. Nor was there any reflection on the final hour of the young couple’s life.

That was then – 1994.

This is now – 2021 in the Mayfair Ballroom at the Benson Hotel.

Cunio, sentenced to two consecutive life terms, was released early from prison on Nov. 1 courtesy of clemency from Gov. Kate Brown.

He told the 80 or so members of the Oregon Criminal Defense Lawyers Association who were present, “I remember five or six years ago Aliza came down to the penitentiary sitting with a group of us in a circle. … (She) went off on this tangent about the governor’s power to commute people, and why don’t they just start commutations … Everybody was excited except me. I told her she was crazy… you don’t … just ask the governor to let us out.”

Actually you can, Cunio learned, and the audience gently laughed.

The year after he committed aggravated murder, Oregon voters approved Measure 11 requiring minimum-mandatory sentences for certain violent crimes. It also required juveniles accused of such crimes to be tried in adult court.

Since Cunio’s crimes occurred before Measure 11, he landed in a grey area. Although he committed a crime of adult proportion, he wanted a juvenile sentence. Years passed, and Cunio and his attorneys appealed on various grounds.

“Bumping your head, bumping your head, bumping your head. … It gives way to cyclical despair” is how he described it.

Over the years, the Oregon legislature chipped away at Measure 11. Although the law had been approved by voters, the legislature’s Democratic supermajority had enough votes to weaken it.

The biggest victory came in 2019 with the passage of Senate Bill 1008, which essentially removed juveniles from Measure 11. While it was not retroactive and did not apply to Cunio, he knew it was only a matter of time before things would shift in his favor.

“It wasn’t litigation that freed me,” he told the criminal defense lawyers. “It was an act of mercy.”

In a strange admission, though, he said that he finally reached a point where he became happy in prison. He was awarded a writing fellowship and had received attention in the media.

“I accepted the possibility I was where I was ever going to be in life,” Cunio said.

Now he’s creating a new life for himself. Two days out of prison, he got his driver’s license.

“By the end of the week, I had my vehicle. … Week three I purchased investment in a property we’re trying to flip. … Yesterday I started my first job,” he said to applause from the audience. He’s working with Lewis & Clark Law School’s Criminal Justice Reform Clinic. He’s also reunifying with family members and has bonded with a young nephew, who’s exuberant about life and books.

As for Kaplan, who got the ball rolling on Brown’s record-setting commutations, she is looking forward to 2022 when Senate Bill 819 takes effect. This piece of legislation was proposed by the Criminal Justice Reform Clinic and establishes a procedure whereby a district attorney and an “incarcerated person” may jointly petition the sentencing court for reconsideration of conviction and sentence.

It could vacate a previous conviction, accept a plea to a new offense and impose a new sentence. It directs the district attorney to notify the victim (or survivor of the victim) in a “trauma-informed manner” when these changes occur. It could allow reform-minded district attorneys, such as Multnomah County’s Mike Schmidt, to overturn Measure 11 convictions.

“SB 819 can do what clemency can do … If we can get 10 people out under 819 it is worth it,” said Kaplan.

Perhaps when the Friday conference came to a close, Cunio walked over to explore Powell’s Books. If he had, he would have found a prominent display near the Info Desk with gift ideas including “Murder Book,” a graphic memoir of a true crime obsession by Hilary Fitzgerald Campbell.

Among the blurbs on the cover: “Surprisingly sweet for a book about murder.” – Karen Chee, writer, Late Night with Seth Meyers.

Or Cunio might have been drawn to one corner of the Purple Room devoted to criminology, prisoners and forensics. Among the books displayed: “The End of Policing,” “Carceral Con,” “Bleeding Out” “Are Prisons Obsolete?” and every prison memoirist’s dream book, “Orange is the New Black” by Piper Kerman, who turned drug dealing into a very profitable and respectable profession.

What Cunio would not find in the world’s largest independent bookstore, though, is “Unmasked” by Andy Ngo. Still not available on the shelves. It can only be ordered online.

Murder can be forgiven. Going after antifa is a crime in Portland, and just asking for trouble.