Shirtcliff

BAKER CITY — Baker County Circuit Court Judge Matt Shirtcliff will not preside over the civil lawsuit that a former Baker City Police detective filed earlier this year against District Attorney Greg Baxter and the district attorney’s office.

Former detective Shannon Regan filed the suit in May.

She contends that Baxter’s decision not to call her as a witness in criminal cases led to her being fired in December 2022.

Baxter made that decision in November 2022, while Regan was on paid administrative leave for allegedly listening to privileged phone calls between a murder suspect and his lawyer in 2020.

Regan’s attorney, Dan Thenell, of Portland, contends that Baxter “misconstrued the applicable law” in placing Regan on a list of police officers he won’t call to testify in criminal cases because their credibility is potentially tainted.

That decision had a significant effect on Regan. As the city’s chief detective, she was an important witness in criminal cases. Thenell contended in the lawsuit that Baxter’s decision “essentially foreclosed” Regan’s ability to work in law enforcement.

Jonathan Cannon, then the Baker City manager, cited Baxter’s decision, about not calling her as a witness, in a Dec. 5, 2022, letter to Regan, less than a month before Cannon fired her.

“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.

Thenell wants a judge to order Baxter to remove Regan from the list of officers who won’t be called as witnesses.

But Thenell didn’t want Shirtcliff to be the judge to consider that request. On Aug. 11, Thenell filed a motion seeking to disqualify Shirtcliff from presiding over Regan’s complaint. Thenell wrote that Regan “reasonably believes that Judge Shirtcliff would not be fair and impartial in this particular case.”

The basis for Regan’s concern about Shirtcliff’s impartiality is the same criminal case that led Baxter to decide not to call her as a witness.

That was the investigation into the January 2020 fatal shooting of Angela Michelle Parish in Baker City. Shawn Quentin Greenwood, of Vale, was charged with murdering Parrish. The case was filed in Baker County Circuit Court, with Shirtcliff as the presiding judge.

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.

Shirtcliff ruled on Schaeffer’s motion. Although the judge didn’t dismiss the criminal charges, he did conclude that Regan had listened to the phone calls and the resulting “violation of Mr. Greenwood’s right to counsel is clear and problematic.”

Shirtcliff ruled that Regan would not be allowed to testify were Greenwood to go to trial.

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.

Shirtcliff on Aug. 25 granted the motion to disqualify himself from the lawsuit.

No hearings have been scheduled in Regan’s lawsuit.