Defense attorneys preview five criminal-justice bills including discovery timelines and misdemeanor reclassifications

Maylee Browning, legislative director for the Oregon Criminal Defense Lawyers Association, told the House Judiciary Committee that her group is presenting five bills intended to “better utilize the scarce resources of the criminal legal system.”

The package includes SB 177, a discovery bill that would replace the statute’s vague “as soon as practicable” language with specific timelines; HB 2469, a court-procedures bill that would add a mechanism to reconsider pretrial release decisions and allow some misdemeanors to be treated administratively as violations; HB 2640, a crimes-and-violations bill proposing to narrow aggravated harassment and downgrade several low-level misdemeanors to violations; HB 2472, the Fairness for Youth bill shifting the burden of proof in juvenile registry hearings to the state; and HB 2641, a bill aligning Oregon’s evidence and…