Expect the systematic white-washing of crime victims to be on full display at the Jeremy Christian trial later this month. The systematic white-washing of named victims in criminal cases is a common practice that the Mulnomah County District Attorney's Office (MCDA) has engaged in for a long time. What is victim white-washing? It is the idea that once someone is named as a victim in a criminal case that they can do no wrong.
Before addressing victim white-washing in the Jeremy Christian case, I'm summarizing my own experience with this practice. Several years ago I had a stalker that was harassing my family and myself. This stalker did things like make a bogus 911 call accusing me of holding hostages at the home of a relative and the police responded in force until they talked to that relative and realized that it was a false alarm. They may have even sent the SWAT/CERT Team or at least I think the radio transcript said they were on standby. This person doxed my entire family and encouraged people to harass them because they could not get to me. I had a prime suspect, but no solid proof. When I found that proof I sent an ultimatum implying that I would use violent force if that person did not discontinue their course of conduct. When the conduct resumed I sent a death threat. A couple days later I was arrested by the Warrant Strike Team and held on $1,000,000 bail before being indicted in federal court and held without bail. I eventually received a two year prison sentence for using a mechanism of interstate commerce (the internet) to make a death threat. As I sat in jail for the first time I was convinced it would only be a matter of time until the government would call me the real victim. That never happened. Instead they white-washed everything my stalker had done, used it as proof of emotional distress inflicted on my stalker as a result of my lawful business practices, and at one point even called swatting my relative "reasonable under the circumstances." Those circumstances were just that I would not remove a posting about that person from a website. That was all. The lesson I learned was that as long as law enforcement in this area names someone as a victim and sympathizes with anything they did, they will support them no matter what they did even if they committed crimes against the defendant. All one needs to do to gain their sympathy is prove that if they were in the same position they would have felt the same way. They need not prove that they would have done the same thing. Just that they would have felt justified doing it. A good way to do that is by getting they to say repeatedly that someone did stuff they wish they could arrest them for. At that point the real victim that was not breaking any laws at first becomes the criminal even if they can prove that the other person broke the law first.
Fast forward to Jeremy Christian's confrontation with Antifa activist Micah Fletcher on a Max train in 2017. There was a point at which both had exchanged pushes and Jeremy Christian had pulled out a knife. By all accounts Micah shoved Jeremy again and Jeremy started slashing. In the end Micah was almost killed by a stab wound to the neck and two guys were dead with similar stab wounds because they had gotten up to support Micah. Now in Micah's defense he is on the autism spectrum, people on the spectrum take things more literally than most people, and Christian did yell, "hit me again!" A normal person would not have viewed that as a request to hit Christian, but someone like Micah could have. A normal person would have viewed that as a warning that if anyone hit or shoved him again that he would stab them. Despite that Micah shoved him again anyway. I think that was a stupid decision, ballsy, but stupid. Ballsy enough to say that I respect him even though I later become Jeremy's neighbor and friend in jail. Still, if I were in Jeremy's position I would have felt threatened by Micah's shove because by doing that he was demonstrating that he wanted to shove him so bad that even threatening him with a knife was not enough to stop him. I can't say that I would not have reacted in a similar fashion to how Jeremy did, but I do doubt that even with a piece of steel like Jeremy's Coast Rapid Response Knife, I could not have stabbed three grown men in the neck. Then again Jeremy probably though the same thing before he tried it. I probably would have aimed for the thighs so that I could make my way for an exit without being chased. That brings us to the proportionality issue which is Jeremy's biggest problem beyond the poisoning of the jury pool and the emotion factor.
In terms of proportionality this case reminds me of the State of Oregon vs. Michael Lytsell. I met Mikey at the Columbia County Jail while on a United States Marshal (USM) hold in my threat case. At the time Mikey was charged with murder and like Jeremy insisted he was defending himself. Mikey described to me a guy coming up on him at a party, telling the guy to back up, and when he came at him again he shot him. Eventually the DA offered him a plea deal to manslaughter and he took it. He received a sentence of just over 19 years. I think that under the circumstances of Jeremy's case, if the MCDA were to offer Jeremy a manslaughter plea that he would take. I would if I were him. I wouldn't risk spending the rest of my life in prison even though Jeremy's response was more proportional than Mikey's. I say that because Mikey was not outnumbered and a gun is of course worse than a knife. On top of that Jeremy has a metal plate in his face that carries with it the possibility of serious injury or death in a fist fight, he has PTSD, and a history of getting beat up in fights when outnumbered. Those factors in my opinion favor at most a charge of manslaughter and a lesser sentence than what Mikey got because again Jeremy was outnumbered and has those other reasons to experience more fear than the average person.
Now back to the victim white washing. As far as the MCDA is concerned Micah Fletcher can do no wrong and has never made any mistakes in his life whatsoever. As far as the MCDA is concerned Micah Fletcher is perfect in every way. In fact, the separation of church and state is probably the only thing keeping them from calling him the second coming. Micah could shout death threats and insults at Jeremy from the gallery on a daily basis, vandalize his parents' house, and torch Jeremy's comic books without facing any consequences whatsoever. Then the MCDA would use that behavior against Jeremy as proof of emotional distress suffered by Micah. The jury would most likely buy that argument because the average idiot that isn't smart enough to get out of jury duty does not know that all crime victims are systematically white washed. They know that the MCDA has a duty to seek the truth and punish unlawful conduct by any party in a case no matter what their status, but they don't know that the MCDA actively refuses to uphold the law when the victim of a crime is a defendant in a criminal proceeding and the perpetrator of that crime is a named victim in a proceeding. Now, I am not accusing Micah Fletcher of doing anything illegal. What I mean to say is that because of the MCDA's practice of systematic white washing, you can't believe what they say about crime victims in general when that victim is accused of doing anything wrong in a case.
The Jeremy Christian trial is being prosecuted by Donald Nathan Rees and Jeffrey Alan Howes. Rees obtained the first indictment in my threat case and I recall reading an email in my discovery from Rees to my stalker explaining that he would be having Kevin Demer take over due to Demer's familiarity with the circumstances. Those circumstances included prosecuting someone for my stalker in the past. That should have been enough to keep Demer off the case, but again the MCDA is not an objective organization.