A romance mystery writer charged with murdering her chef husband is asking a judge to let her ride out the coronavirus pandemic at an undisclosed guest house in the Portland area, court records show.

Lawyers for Nancy Crampton Brophy, 69, claim their client’s age and history as a diabetic require her immediate transfer from the Multnomah County Detention Center to what they described as “alternate confinement,” according to recent court filings.

The attorneys, Lisa Maxfield and Kristen Winemiller, also filed a habeas corpus petition against Multnomah County Sheriff Mike Reese, alleging the conditions in the jails he oversees create a medically dangerous environment and threaten the defendant’s life.

“Ms. Crampton Brophy’s age and poor health — combined with the lack of medically necessary sanitation and separation at the jail — expose her to an unreasonable, unacceptably high risk of fatal infection if the jail becomes an incubator for the coronavirus, as health experts predict it will be,” court records claim.

“Once the defendant is attacked by the virus, medical staff will have virtually no means to save her: the battle will be waged between the virus and her 70-year-old, diabetic immune system. Steps must be taken now, immediately, to avoid exposing her to the virus.”

Crampton Brophy has been behind bars since September 2018 after police say she gunned down Daniel Brophy, her husband of 27 years, in a kitchen at the Oregon Culinary Institute that June. Daniel Brophy had been a beloved instructor at the school in downtown Portland.

The case became international news after The Oregonian/OregonLive revealed Crampton Brophy once wrote an essay titled “How to Murder Your Husband.” Her self-published titles include “The Wrong Husband” and “Hell On The Heart.”

Crampton Brophy is among a growing number of inmates in Oregon and around the U.S. seeking release from local, state and federal custody amid the coronavirus epidemic, which public health experts say can spread more aggressively within jails than the community at large.

Multnomah County’s two jails, which can hold up to 1,200 inmates, have yet to report a known COVID-19 case among jail staff or the general population.

But according to court filings, jail staff have rejected Crampton Brophy’s requests to create social distancing at the Multnomah County Detention Center, such as having protein shakes and medication delivered to her cell.

Crampton Brophy’s lawyers also claim she fears mingling with inmates in the cafeteria line and is worried about contracting COVID-19 from the jail’s food workers, who travel in and out of the facility each day.

“Her only means to minimize trips outside her cell — other than starvation — has been to purchase food through the jail ‘canteen’ service,” the court filings read. “However, the healthiest food available through the jail canteen, orange juice, makes her diabetic condition more volatile.”

To save Crampton Brophy from what her lawyers called “imminent death,” they have proposed their client stay in a guest house that belongs to “longtime Oregon residents” in the Portland area. Court records do not identify these residents or the precise location of their guest house.

Crampton Brophy would be placed under GPS monitoring and not allowed to leave the home, her lawyers said. Food and groceries would be brought to her. Only medical professionals or Crampton Brophy’s attorneys would be allowed to visit.

Multnomah County prosecutors have rejected the proposal outright, records show, and have argued that the court should hold a release hearing to determine whether Crampton Brophy is eligible for bail. Crampton Brophy has previously waived her right to have one.

“Self-confinement in an undisclosed location, supervised by undisclosed individuals, while wearing a passive GPS monitor is not a program conducted by the Department of Corrections and is clearly not a suitable alternative to being confined in the jail,” wrote Shawn Overstreet, a deputy district attorney.

-- Shane Dixon Kavanaugh; 503-294-7632

Email at skavanaugh@oregonian.com

Follow on Twitter @shanedkavanaugh

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