Roger Benson v. State of Oregon

Charles Carreon, an Ashland, Oregon lawyer specializing in computer and criminal law, won a $306,500 verdict in Portland last Friday against the State of Oregon for negligent handling of computerized “rap sheets” that record and distribute information about criminal convictions to other police agencies. The Portland jury rendered the verdict in the full amount requested by Carreon’s client, Roger Benson, concluding that bad computer programming in the Oregon State Police computer system led to Benson’s arrest and confinement in a California jail. “A routine encounter with local police” Carreon told the jury, “led to Mr. Benson’s arrest and confinement for 43 days due to Oregon’s negligent identification of him as a convicted felon.”

The false Oregon felony convictions came up in a computer search, said Carreon, “and caused the local cop to think Benson was a felon.” Since Benson, described as a “woodsman and former gold-miner,” was in possession of a small-caliber pistol, he was arrested for being a felon in possession of a firearm. Once in jail, Benson found it impossible to get out. “Most of my friends abandoned me, and I could not find a lawyer to believe me,” said Benson, who also had his nose and teeth broken by jailhouse thugs during his imprisonment. “Jail is not a good place for anyone,” said Carreon, “but when they think you’re a three-time felon, they put you in with the worst types, and then you’re in real danger.”

“The most shocking part of the case,” said Carreon, is that “Benson was not the only victim.” The problem of mistaken criminal records, he said, “is pervasive throughout the State of Oregon, and I have evidence of at least 194 other cases just in Lane County Oregon where people’s criminal records are corrupted.” Due to the mixup, which Carreon says stems from the adoption of a “LiveScan computer system” that takes electronic fingerprints in the local jails, people are being wrongfully arrested for crimes they did not commit. Carreon says the problem must be addressed on a statewide level, because the evidence he presented at trial “showed that the OSP and local agencies are just passing the buck, and no one is accepting responsibility for the problem.”

Carreon said he has “already been contacted by a person who was wrongfully arrested in Salem at her place of work due to a similar mistake.” Carreon, an attorney with fifteen years experience, is a former Jackson County Oregon Deputy District Attorney and has an established reputation
in the field of computer and criminal law. He has vowed to bring a class action suit to clean up the records statewide. “I would be irresponsible if I just got a verdict for Roger and moved on. This is a matter of public safety. Not only are people like Roger suffering, but police are also put in danger, because the computer records are failing to identify people with convictions who actually have them! It is outrageous that this had to be proved to a jury to bring this scandal into the light. If we have to go back to ink-and-paper fingerprinting, so be it. At least when they used that method, these mixups didn’t happen.” Carreon noted further “Now that Benson has proven that the State was negligent, there should be no further delays. Other class members should not have to prove it all over again. The system’s broke. Let’s fix it.”

Carreon previously attained national attention in November, 2000, when he recovered the world’s most valuable Internet domain name “Sex.Com” for the true owner after it was “hijacked” by a pornography merchant. Asked about the importance of LiveScan Litigation in comparison to the Sex.Com case, Carreon said “There is no comparison. Sex.Com was about property rights. The LiveScan Litigation is about human rights. With this case, we will be protecting the citizens of the United States from a threat to their freedom and dignity. The big question is the same one that was posed in the movie Terminator II – who will rule? Us or the machines?”

After a trial of four days, the jury rendered the verdict of $306,500 in the Portland Courthouse on Friday, August 1st. “Judge Gallagher was a model of fairness throughout the trial,” said Carreon, “and the jury gave us every penny we requested.” The $300,000 was for “past and future emotional distress,” said Carreon, and the remaining $6,500 were to compensate Benson for attorney fees he paid to get out of jail.

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Author's Note: These kinds of problems are very common. Multiple agencies maintain separate databases of information relating to the arrest, trial and/or conviction or acquittal. If information is incorrect in one system, that incorrect information often passed to other systems. Even if the information is corrected in the first system, it may still be wrong in one or more other systems maintained by other agencies.