Local law enforcement are maintaining regular patrols in Baker City and Baker County during the coronavirus crisis.

The civil suit that Shannon Regan, former Baker City Police detective, filed in May 2023 against Baker County District Attorney Greg Baxter has been dismissed with no monetary compensation to either party, according to court records.

Regan’s complaint was dismissed July 19 “with prejudice,” meaning it can’t be refiled. Her attorney, Dan Thenell, prepared the dismissal order, according to court records.

The dismissal does not have any details, other than stating that no “attorney fees, costs or disbursements” were made to either party in the suit.

The dismissal was signed by Judge Erin K. Landis on July 22.

Regan, who was fired Dec. 29, 2022, as the city’s lead detective, claimed in the lawsuit that Baxter’s decision to no longer call Regan as a witness in criminal cases led to her termination.

Regan sought in the complaint to have a judge order Baxter to remove Regan from a list of police officers who won’t be called to testify because their credibility is potentially tainted.

Thenell contended that Baxter “misconstrued the applicable law” in putting Regan on that list in November 2022, while she was on paid administrative leave for allegedly listening to privileged phone calls between a murder suspect and his lawyer in 2020.

By placing Regan on that list, Baxter, who consulted with several other prosecutors prior to making his decision, “essentially foreclosed” Regan’s chance to get another job in law enforcement, according to the complaint, which names Baxter and the district attorney’s office as defendants.

Regan’s certification through the Oregon Department of Public Safety Standards and Training is also “in jeopardy as a direct and proximate result of Defendants’ conduct,” according to the lawsuit.

According to the state agency, which certifies police officers, Regan’s status remains under review.

Baxter said on Monday morning, Aug. 5, that the situation that resulted in the lawsuit was “unfortunate all the way around.”

Thenell had not responded to an email or phone message as of 3 p.m. Monday.

The phone calls

The issue started during the Baker City Police investigation, led by Regan, of the fatal shooting of Angela Michelle Parrish in Baker City in January 2020.

Shawn Quentin Greenwood of Vale was charged with murdering Parrish.

During the summer of 2021, while Greenwood was awaiting trial, his attorney, Jim Schaeffer of La Grande, filed a motion to have all charges dismissed against Greenwood.

Schaeffer based his motion on the claim that Regan had violated Greenwood’s constitutional rights by listening to five phone calls Greenwood made to Schaeffer in 2020.

Although police can legally access and listen to calls that jail inmates make to friends or family, conversations with attorneys are protected by attorney-client privilege.

The five calls that prompted Schaeffer’s motion to dismiss the charges against Greenwood were made to a cellphone number that, according to Schaeffer’s motion, was not on the list of numbers that belonged to attorneys and thus were designated as privileged.

Judge Matt Shirtcliff rejected Schaeffer’s motion to dismiss all charges against Greenwood. But the judge did rule that Baxter couldn’t use at trial any evidence that Regan collected after Sept. 14, 2020, the day her computer was used to access and play recordings of the phone calls, according to a forensic investigation.

In early September 2021, prior to trial, Greenwood accepted a plea agreement with the district attorney’s office in which he pleaded no contest to three lesser charges and was sentenced to 90 months in prison.

Greenwood appealed the sentence, and in April 2024 a three-judge panel of the Oregon Court of Appeals concluded that one of the counts, for first-degree burglary, which had a 66-month prison term, had to be dismissed because Regan violated Greenwood’s constitutional rights by listening to the phone calls.

The Appeals Court judges described Regan’s conduct as “grossly shocking and outrageous.”

During a July 3 hearing in Baker County Circuit Court, Judge Matt Shirtcliff said he could not, based on the circumstances, sentence Greenwood to a longer prison term than was part of his plea agreement in 2021.

Greenwood was released from prison later in July.

In July 2021, Baker City Police Chief Ty Duby placed Regan, a 17-year officer, on paid leave as a result of the phone call allegations.

Regan was paid $6,000 per month while on leave. She did not receive severance pay after City Manager Jonathan Cannon fired her in December 2022, one month after Baxter decided he would no longer use her as a witness.

Investigation

The claims that Regan had listened to privileged phone calls led to an investigation by the Oregon Department of Justice.

The agency concluded in October 2022 that there was no basis for pursuing criminal charges, such as official misconduct, against Regan.

Thenell said in October 2022 that he believes the Department of Justice investigation “completely vindicates Shannon.”

“She’s been on administrative leave for 16 months, and it’s time to put her back to work,” Thenell said at the time. “She’s suffered under the publicity of this investigation.”

But that investigation wasn’t the only review triggered by Schaeffer’s motions in the Greenwood case.

Baxter also convened a group of prosecutors to consider whether his office should call Regan as a witness in criminal cases. Baxter noted in October 2022, after the Department of Justice report concluded that criminal charges weren’t warranted, that the standard for determining whether Regan could continue to testify was lower than the standard for filing criminal charges against her.

Group members were Baxter, his assistant district attorneys Michael Spaulding and Scott Halliday, Wallowa County district attorney Rebecca Frolander, and Crook County district attorney Wade Whiting.

(Whiting was appointed as circuit court judge for Crook and Jefferson counties in December 2021.)

This was a “Brady” team, a term referring to the Brady v. Maryland U.S. Supreme Court case from 1963 in which the court ruled that prosecutors must give defense attorneys any evidence that could help exonerate a criminal defendant, what’s known as exculpatory evidence.

Among that evidence is information that a defense attorney could use to impeach a prosecution witness, including a police officer who investigates the crime.

Officers who are placed on a so-called “Tier 1” list are not called as witnesses because defense attorneys could use their prior conduct to impeach them as witnesses. This effectively makes it impossible for such people to work as police officers, since officers — and in particular detectives, as Regan was — usually are vital prosecution witnesses in criminal trials.

(Officers on the Tier 2 list would not necessarily be disqualified as witnesses, but prosecutors would disclose the officers’ prior conduct to defense attorneys, per the Brady ruling.)

The Brady team that Baxter assembled met on Dec. 21, 2021, Jan. 6, 2022, and, finally, on Nov. 22, 2022, to discuss Regan.

According to a Nov. 23, 2022, letter from Baxter to Duby, the Baker City Police chief, the Brady team during the last of its three meetings “unanimously agreed Detective Regan should not be called as a witness in any future cases,” meaning Baxter had placed her on the Tier 1 list.

The decision, ultimately, was Baxter’s. He did not have to meet with other prosecutors.

Cannon, in a Dec. 5, 2022, letter to Regan, cited Baxter’s decision to place Regan on the Tier 1 list.

“The ability to testify in criminal proceedings is an essential function of your position as a law enforcement officer for Baker City, and you are no longer able to perform that essential function. …” Cannon wrote in the letter, which he sent prior to a pre-disciplinary hearing for Regan.

Less than a month later, he fired Regan.

In Regan’s complaint filed in May 2023, Thenell contends that Regan, while listening to a recorded phone call between Greenwood and Schaeffer, “heard triggering words which caused her to believe that may have been a privileged call” and then “immediately moved on to the next call on the list and did not listen to any more of the call that could have been privileged.”

Thenell also wrote in the complaint that Regan “did not engage in dishonest or untruthful behavior,” and that she should not have been added to the Tier 1 Brady list.

District attorney’s role

Thenell previously asked Baxter not to participate in determining Regan’s status under the Brady case, a request that Baxter declined.

In an Aug. 9, 2021, letter to Baxter, Thenell wrote that due to Baxter’s involvement in the case, including asking Regan about the phone calls Greenwood made, “you cannot act as an advocate and therefore, must recuse yourself.”

In Thenell’s subsequent letter to Baxter, dated Dec. 21, 2021, Thenell notes that Baxter declined to recuse himself as Thenell requested in the August letter.

Baxter had asked Thenell to supply information on Regan’s behalf that the Brady team could consider when deciding whether to add Regan to the Tier 1 list.

In his Dec. 21, 2021, letter, Thenell wrote that he didn’t have sufficient information to “provide a robust mitigation letter on behalf of my client, and my requests for an extension on your deadline have not been answered.”

That deadline was 3 p.m. on Dec. 21, 2021.

Later in the letter, Thenell expressed doubt about whether Regan had done anything to trigger a Brady team review, much less to be added to the Tier 1 list.

“My client did not knowingly listen to any attorney-client calls, and reported this to you (Baxter) personally,” Thenell wrote. “When you spoke to my client in June (2021), she acknowledged she listened to a portion of one call, although she did not know it was attorney-client communication. I understand the cell number was not, in fact, registered with the jail’s phone system, which would have automatically flagged the calls had that registration been in place. Given these facts, there was no dishonesty on the part of Det. Sgt. Regan.”

Thenell also cited text messages between Baxter and Regan on June 21, 2021, in which Regan wrote “I can own one call, I don’t know which one. I don’t know content. I didn’t listen to 20 minutes worth or anything twice.”

“She was clearly very upset about this situation, expressing remorse and not attempting to conceal anything,” Thenell wrote to Baxter. “All of the evidence suggests my client had no knowledge of the attorney-client nature of the communications and therefore, her denials lack material dishonesty.”

Regan letter to Baxter

The complaint filed in Baker County Circuit Court includes several exhibits, one of them a letter Regan wrote to Baxter.

Regan wrote that although Baxter had written a letter of recommendation for her when she applied for the detective sergeant position, he did “a complete 180 degree turn around in a matter of days” during June 2021, after Schaeffer, citing the phone calls with Greenwood, tried to have the criminal charges dismissed.

Regan mentioned another criminal case in 2021 in which Baxter said publicly that he negotiated a plea agreement, rather than going to trial, because Regan was the lead investigator in the case and that Baxter would have been limited in the evidence he could present.

Baxter said that although there was no evidence that Regan acted improperly in investigating that crime, the “taint” from the allegations against her in the Greenwood case, related to the phone calls, would have weakened the prosecution’s case had it gone to trial.

In her letter to Baxter, Regan cited that case, and Baxter’s statement.

“You have purposefully tried to place me in the lime light as a bad person,” Regan wrote.

She also mentioned the Greenwood phone calls.

“I made a mistake, an unknowing mistake,” she wrote. “I owned it. Because I don’t remember something from eight months ago and hundreds, if not thousands of jail phone calls later, doesn’t make me a liar.”

Later in the letter, Regan wrote: “You have deemed me as guilty from day one, before any formal investigation took place. You did your own investigation and found me guilty in your mind without any due process. You have officially broken me. You have embarrassed me to the public by writing a one-sided release to cover yourself. You’re okay telling the world my shortcomings but definitely don’t want them knowing yours.”