County bench battle raises some eyebrows

May election - Prosecutor Andrew Erwin is trying to unseat incumbent Keith Rogers

By Christian Gaston

The Forest Grove News-Times, Apr 23, 2008, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (64 Reader comments)

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It’s the kind of battle you’d expect to play out in a courtroom on network television.

A veteran defense attorney who claims Atticus Finch as a hero is pitted against a county prosecutor from a long judicial lineage.

But if the characters sound familiar, the conflict isn’t. That’s because this battle isn’t happening in the courthouse; it’s playing out at the ballot box.

Keith B. Rogers – a former public defender who was appointed to the Washington County bench by Gov. Ted Kulongoski in December 2007 – is fending off a challenge in the May 20 election from Deputy District Attorney Andrew Erwin.

Erwin has cast Rogers as “soft on crime.” Rogers’ backers, meanwhile, have alleged that Erwin is in the pocket of victims’ rights advocates.

Both dismiss the charges, but the heat in the upcoming election is almost unheard of in a judicial race, especially one involving a sitting judge.

Members of the Washington County bar say an incumbent judge hasn’t been challenged for 16 years, and a member of the DA’s office has never led the charge.

But Erwin told the News-Times that Rogers’ background, including his admiration for the fictional crusading defense lawyer in “To Kill a Mockingbird,” made the clash inevitable.

“I expected somebody from the DA’s office to step up and run against him,” Erwin said. “Our concern was that he wouldn’t be able to take the defense attorney hat off.”

From 1998 to 2007, Rogers served as director of the Washington County office of Metro Public Defenders, a private firm that has a contract to handle many of the court-appointed cases in the Portland area.

But the 57-year-old lawyer said he’s tried enough cases now that his record shows he’s a fair arbiter.

“I do not have an agenda,” Rogers said. “I’m not trying to prove anything. My goal only is to follow Oregon law as faithfully as possible.”

Erwin, of course, disagrees. The 41-year-old county prosecutor points to a February DUII case, State v. Cerriteno-Palemeno, where Rogers dismissed four traffic charges, citing a lack of evidence.

“He goes through this tortured logic because he wants to believe three drunk friends instead of a police officer,” said Erwin, who’s netted the endorsement of nearly every police union in the county.

Rogers said the case was a straightforward example of the state not proving its case.

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