Victim, DA try to halt rapist’s release

Lawsuit in judge’s hands over planned parole of Richard Troy Gillmore

By Ben Myers

Pamplin Media Group, Jan 8, 2008, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (23 Reader comments)

A Marion County judge heard arguments Wednesday but did not make a decision in an unusual lawsuit seeking to invalidate the Oregon parole board’s decision to release from prison the so-called Jogging Rapist on Jan. 18.

Following the hearing, Judge Paul Lipscomb’s assistant said a decision probably would come by the end of this week.

The parole board decided in October to release Richard Troy Gillmore, who admitted in 1987 to committing multiple rapes in east Portland and eastern Multnomah County in the 1970s and 1980s.

When the crimes were happening, the then-unidentified rapist was known as the “Jogging Rapist” because he selected, stalked and attacked his victims while he was jogging.

The parole board’s decision to release Gillmore came despite the board’s finding that Gillmore remains a danger to the health and safety of others. And it came despite the fact that Gillmore originally was sentenced, in 1987, to a minimum of 30 years in prison.

In 1988, without notice to Gillmore rape victims, the parole board reduced that minimum sentence to 15 years.

The co-plaintiffs who filed the suit challenging the parole board’s decision – Multnomah County District Attorney Michael Schrunk and Gillmore rape victim Tiffany Edens – accuse the board of two improprieties: failing to notify Edens of the parole hearing and failing to provide a written, detailed rationale for its decision.

Both of these actions are required under Oregon law.

State says plan comes later

Although the board found that Gillmore is still dangerous, the board legally can issue a release order if it finds the offender can be “adequately controlled with supervision and mental health treatment” in the community, which it did in Gillmore’s case.

But, with that finding, the law also requires the board to provide “in writing the detailed bases of its decisions.”

“What supervision? What treatment? Where in the community?” asked Multnomah County Deputy District Attorney Darian Stanford at Wednesday’s Marion County Circuit Court hearing. “(The board) doesn’t say.”

That was the aspect of assertions in the lawsuit that seemed to most concern Lipscomb.

“If there is anything in this record that suggests why the board concluded that he is treatable in the community, I haven’t found it,” Lipscomb said in a lengthy exchange with Oregon Assistant Attorney General Tom Castle, who represented the parole board.

Castle argued that a plan detailing how an inmate will be supervised in the community typically is devised by the supervising agency – in this case, the Multnomah County Department of Corrections – after the decision to release.

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