Department of Justice official: No criminal charges warranted for Baker City Police Sgt. Shannon Regan

Oct. 21—Officials from the Oregon Department of Justice have concluded there is no basis for criminal charges against Baker City Police Sgt. Shannon Regan, who has been on paid leave for more than a year.

Police Chief Ty Duby placed Regan, a 17-year officer, on leave in July 2021 after the attorney representing a murder suspect alleged that Regan, the lead detective in the case, listened to five phone calls between the suspect and the attorney in 2020, and by doing so violated the suspect's constitutional rights.

The city has been paying Regan about $6,000 per month while she is on leave.

In an email to the Baker City Herald on Friday afternoon, Oct. 21, Baker City Manager Jonathan Cannon wrote: "Baker City is reviewing the letter from the Department of Justice. It appears from the letter the Department of Justice has declined to criminally prosecute Sgt. Shannon Regan. The administrative proceedings on the matter are not complete. It is in the best interest of everyone involved that we finalize all proceedings before making a change to the status of administrative leave for Sgt. Shannon Regan."

Regan referred questions to her attorney, Dan Thenell of Portland.

Thenell said in a phone interview Friday afternoon that he believes an Oct. 17 letter from Jay D. Hall, senior assistant attorney general, to Greg Baxter, Baker County district attorney, concluding there is a lack of evidence for criminal charges against Regan, "completely vindicates Shannon."

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

Thenell said he was appointed to represent Regan by the Fraternal Order of Police's legal defense fund. The Fraternal Order of Police has about 360,000 members in law enforcement nationwide, include officers with the Baker City Police, Thenell said.

Baxter also released a written statement on the matter Friday afternoon:

"The Baker County District Attorney's Office appreciates the Department of Justice's investigation into this conflict case for possible criminal charges involving Detective Shannon Regan. Beyond a reasonable doubt is a high standard and the DOJ determined that there was insufficient evidence to proceed with criminal charges. The District Attorney's Office will now move forward with finalizing a decision on whether Detective Regan's actions in the Greenwood case will allows the office to use her as a witness in future criminal cases. That determination has a different standard that must be applied."

Thenell, however, contends that the different standards aren't relevant, and that the Department of Justice's conclusion about Regan should be sufficient to alleviate any concerns city officials might have about her ability to work as a detective, and concerns Baxter might have about being able to use her as a witness in criminal cases.

Accusation that led to administrative leave

Attorney Jim Schaeffer of La Grande sought during the summer of 2021 to have all charges dismissed against his client, Shawn Quentin Greenwood, arguing that Regan, by listening to the phone calls which Greenwood made while in the Baker County Jail, had violated Greenwood's constitutional rights.

Schaeffer argued in court that Regan's conduct was "egregious" and an "intrusion and violation of my client's constitutional rights."

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.

Judge Matt Shirtcliff of Baker County Circuit Court declined 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.

In early September 2021, prior to a scheduled 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, of Vale, had been charged with first-degree murder in the January 2020 fatal shooting of Angela Parrish in Baker City. He pleaded no contest (which has the same effect as a conviction) to criminally negligent homicide, first-degree burglary, and attempting to elude law enforcement.

Five other counts, including first-degree murder, were dismissed in a plea agreement with the district attorney's office.

Baxter, in a press release at the time of Greenwood's pleas, said: "The Baker County District Attorney's Office offered the plea agreement in this case after it was apparent that many important pieces of evidence would not be available at trial due to the lead police investigator listening to privileged telephone conversations between the defendant and his attorney. The state believed that at trial, that the defense would have focused on the actions of Baker City Police Detective Shannon Regan thereby clouding the evidence concerning the crimes committed by Greenwood."

In July 2021, after Schaeffer filed a motion to dismiss charges against Greenwood, citing the phone calls, Duby and Baxter asked Oregon State Police to investigate and determine whether Regan could be charged with official misconduct.

Thenell said he believes Baxter "panicked" after Schaeffer filed his motion, and that Baxter overestimated the effect that Schaeffer's claims about Regan's actions had on the district attorney's case against Greenwood.

Thenell contends that Baxter should have recognized that the situation "was not the constitutional crisis he made it out to be."

Oregon State Police investigation

According to the Oct. 17 letter from Hall to Baxter, Sgt. Evan Sether of the Oregon State Police investigated the allegations against Regan related to the phone calls.

The Oregon Department of Justice's Criminal Justice Division then reviewed the results of that investigation.

Although a forensic review showed that Regan's work computer is the only one used to access the five calls between Greenwood and Schaeffer, Sether, the OSP detective, "was able to establish that during the time in which the audio files were played, Detective Regan was engaged in other law enforcement activities, including preparing for a SWAT operation the next day," Hall wrote in his letter to Baxter.

Hall also wrote that Regan was interviewed about calls she listened to, "and to her recollection, she only heard one phone call that might have included an attorney, however she did not recognize the voice of the person speaking with Greenwood. She also indicated she would not have recognized Schaeffer's voice because she was not familiar with it."

Hall also wrote in his letter to Baxter that Shirtcliff had concluded that the district attorney's office didn't receive information about the content of the phone calls between Greenwood and Schaeffer.

In the final section of his letter, under the heading "Legal Analysis," Hall wrote: "In our review of the investigation, there is no clear evidence that Detective Regan engaged in criminal conduct."

Later in the letter Hall writes: "Arguably Detective Regan should have been more careful in reviewing the recorded calls, but her lack of diligence in that regard does not mean that she has committed a crime. Rather, the appropriate remedy in this context would be suppression of evidence if it was unlawfully obtained."

Which is basically what Shirtcliff ruled regarding evidence that Regan collected in the Greenwood case after the date the recorded phone calls were played.

Hall, in the "legal analysis" section of the letter, wrote that although Baxter had decided he could not have called Regan as a witness against Greenwood had there been a trial, the law, on the issue of whether a police officer has violated a defendant's constitutional rights, "is not straightforward."

Hall cited a case, State v. Russum, in which "the court indicated that it was unsettled whether a detective's inadvertent reading of unmarked inmate mail containing attorney-client communications implicated the defendant's right to counsel. Second, the record would not support a conclusion that Detective Regan knew she was listening to calls from Greenwood to his attorney, that she forwarded the calls to the district attorney, or that she took any action with respect to the calls to advance the criminal case against Greenwood."

Thenell, Regan's attorney, said he believes Hall's letter conclusively establishes not only that Regan didn't commit a crime, but that she did nothing that would warrant her continuing to be on administrative leave.

Thenell believes that the reference in Hall's letter to a police officer's "inadvertent reading" of an inmate's letters is important, although in Regan's case the issue wasn't written material but recorded phone calls.

Thenell contends that the OSP investigation shows that Regan didn't intentionally listen to Greenwood's conversations with his attorney, and that she took no action that violated Greenwood's constitutional rights.

Thenell said Baker City has hired an investigator to determine whether Regan, separate from the criminal investigation, violated any department policies.

Thenell contends that the Department of Justice's conclusion that Regan didn't engage in official misconduct also is sufficient to determine that she did nothing which would warrant her remaining on paid leave.

"If the city wanted her to show up for work Monday, she'd be there," Thenell said. "She's ready to go to work."