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Defendant gets chicken dinner as part of plea
Defendant gets chicken dinner as part of plea
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) - After two years of eating Multnomah County jail food while awaiting trial for aggravated murder, Tremayne Durham was dreaming of buckets of fried chicken.
Last week, as part of a plea deal, he got it. Two kinds. Circuit Court Judge Eric Bergstrom agreed to the unusual arrangement.
Shortly after pleading guilty, Durham sat down to a feast of KFC chicken, Popeye's fried chicken, mashed potatoes, coleslaw, carrot cake and Hagen-Dazs ice cream.
And when he is sentenced next month, he'll dine on calzones, pizza, lasagna and ice cream. That's the day he's planning to marry his girlfriend from the East Coast.
Bergstrom said he couldn't comment before the Aug. 6 formal sentencing.
But a colleague, Judge Michael McShane, said judges need flexibility in plea deals.
He said the dinner is an inconsequential concession in a death-penalty case.
"What Eric has to weigh is an odd request versus the raw economics of the taxpayer money that's going to be spent," McShane said.
A plea bargain saves the victim's family from having to sit through an emotional trial, McShane said. Durham's trial was scheduled to last five weeks.
If convicted and given the death penalty or even life in prison, Durham's appeals could last 20 years and cost the state over $1 million, legal experts say.
Durham, 33, agreed to a sentence of life in prison with the possibility of release after 30 years. He agreed not to appeal.
Durham, a New York resident and convicted rapist, pleaded guilty to the June 2006 aggravated murder of Adam Duane Calbreath, 39, of Gresham.
Durham shot Calbreath in the head using a pillow as a silencer. Authorities say Durham wanted to sell ice cream and had ordered from an Oregon company an $18,000 truck that would play music. Durham then changed his mind but was refused a refund.
He came to Oregon for his money and revenge. He killed Calbreath, a former employee of the company, while looking for its owner, Rob Chambers.
Norm Frink, a chief deputy of the Multnomah County district attorney, said his office agreed to the deal because it saved at least one surviving victim from testifying and secured a conviction and life sentence for Durham.
"There's a significant possibility he'd not be convicted of what he did, which was aggravated murder," said Frink, noting Durham might have been convicted of a lesser charge or even acquitted.
Durham asked to serve his sentence in a New York prison.
Oregon has no interstate compact with New York, but the judge said he'd write a letter asking that Durham be transferred to a prison in a nearby state.
Details of the deal spread throughout the courthouse and the jail, but McShane said it won't set a precedent.
But he predicted a surge in unusual demands from defendants.
