An Oregon state police officer is expected on Friday to plead guilty to mishandling an investigation into a killing spree in the Pacific north-west by two white supremacists.
Detective David Steele was scheduled to appear in court on Friday, accused of withholding and destroying evidence, backdating evidence reports and intercepting communications between a suspect and attorneys.
Steele was lead investigator in the case of David “Joey” Pedersen and Holly Grigsby, who in August were sentenced to life in prison for killing four people in nine days. Officers arrested the couple outside of Yuba City, California, in October 2011. Grigsby told officers that they were driving to Sacramento to “kill more Jews”.
Steele was removed from the case in the fall of 2013. He has been on paid administrative leave since December of that year.
Marion County deputy district attorney Paige Clarkson said Steele was expected to enter a guilty plea for charges of forgery and official misconduct. He is to be sentenced at the arraignment in Salem.
Oregon state police said in a statement they were reviewing Steele’s past cases and were “committed to learning from this situation and preventing it in the future”.
Renée Manes, a lawyer for Pedersen, said it was common for defense attorneys to worry about how police handle investigations. “Unfortunately, our concerns are rarely provable and are rarely taken seriously,” Manes told the Associated Press.
Though Grigsby and Pedersen admitted more than once to their crimes, the newspaper the Oregonian said Steele’s bungling of the case nearly undermined it.
“A side note to law enforcement agencies, prosecutors and the public officials who oversee them: cases like this reinforce the perception that there are two tracks of justice in this world – one for regular people facing criminal allegations and a special track for law enforcement accused of misconduct,” wrote the editorial board on Wednesday.
“This only eats away at the public’s confidence in the justice system that you are sworn to uphold.”
