Pendleton puts municipal court on the record

The city of Pendleton has been operating its own court for decades, but starting Dec. 1, the court’s decisions will have much greater weight.

The Pendleton City Council unanimously voted Tuesday to make the Pendleton Municipal Court a court of record. The day-to-day operations of the court shouldn’t change much in the coming months, but the move has larger implications for the hundreds of cases that move through the court every year and a state court system buckling under heavy strain.

Part of becoming a court of record is literal: The Pendleton Municipal Court doesn’t make or keep records of any of its proceedings, which is standard for most municipal courts across Oregon. Once the change goes into effect, Pendleton will become the only municipal court in Eastern Oregon to record all of its business.

Otherwise, the municipal court operates a lot like the circuit court.

The court hears a range of cases, from traffic tickets and city code violations to jury trials for more serious offenses like misdemeanor assaults. The only types of cases the court doesn’t hear are felonies and any cases that could result in supervised probation.

The municipal court does all of its business in a meeting room at Pendleton City Hall. Just down the hall from the office where residents pay water bills, the courtroom doubles as City Council chambers. Court of record or not, this is where it will remain.

Although not being a court of record allows the city to run a low-cost justice system, its main drawback is that any decision by the judge or jury can be appealed to the circuit court in front of a different judge and jury. And because nothing is recorded, none of the testimony, evidence or verdicts are considered at the circuit court level.

That fact eventually drew the attention of Blaine Clooten after he became the municipal judge.

Since moving to Eastern Oregon in 2013, Clooten worked a variety of legal jobs, taking on prosecutor work for the municipal courts in Hermiston and Pendleton, and the Umatilla County District Attorney’s Office, all while operating his private practice.

“We’re a legal desert out here in Eastern Oregon,” he said. “There’s not as many attorneys as there are people that need help. And for that reason, a lot of people have to be general practitioners. I call it ‘door law.’ Whatever walked in the door was the law.”

The municipal court judgeship is only a part-time, appointed position in Pendleton. When the job opened in 2021, the City Council chose Clooten to fill the bench.

Clooten said he soon got to work with staff on how to make improvements to the court. By the time former Gov. Kate Brown announced late last year that she was forgiving $1.8 million in court and traffic fines to reinstate drivers licenses, Clooten said he was already undertaking a similar process at the municipal court for many drivers in Pendleton.

He was motivated to pursue turning the municipal court into a court of record because he saw the system as operating inefficiently, with lawyers, law enforcement and jurors all participating in cases where the slate could be wiped clean after it was all over.

Clooten said his court can offer more individualized attention to each case because of its size and he thinks that’s something the court can maintain even after it makes the switch this winter. But becoming a court of record means any appeals would go to the Oregon Court of Appeals, rather than a circuit court.

As a former prosecutor, Clooten said providing some alleviation to the state court system also played a factor in his push to change the court’s status. Less appeals means more cases will stay at the municipal level, meaning a lighter caseload for the state courts.

Pendleton’s decision comes at a time when state courts are being pressured throughout the system.

In some jurisdictions, the demand for public defense lawyers is outstripping the supply, creating a constitutional crisis. A group of Marion County public defenders are bringing a case to the Oregon Supreme Court about whether trial judges can require defense attorneys to work more cases than they consent to. Clooten said growing case loads are putting pressure on prosecutors as well.

The Oregon Sixth Judicial District, which covers three state courts in Umatilla and Morrow counties, is not at a breaking point. Court administrator Irma Solis said the court is still able to find public defenders when it needs them.

But public defenders are still facing constraints. Justin Morton, the director of InterMountain Public Defender in Pendleton, said his organization stopped taking new clients during the month of September to avoid overload.

Despite the state court system’s problems, some local courts are shrinking rather than expanding.

The Hermiston Municipal Court moved some of its misdemeanor cases to circuit court in 2014 as a cost saving measure. And Grant County briefly considered axing its justice court last summer for budgetary reasons before scuttling its plans amid pushback.

One of the only obstacles to becoming a court of record was a concern that it would cost the city more money due to the higher cost of recording and running the court. Clooten was able to convince the Council that fewer appeals out of municipal court would result in the court keeping more of its fees and fines it loses to the circuit court. He added that the city could return to the issue if costs started to outpace revenue.

Clooten said municipal courts matter because he sees it as a tool of reducing recidivism and helping people go back to contributing to their communities. Once the court of record law goes into effect in December, Clooten believes those tools will go further.

“Those stories occur in municipal court,” he said. “I see them every day. I see people succeeding.”