More than three years ago, Vance Day remembers watching a national TV news program from his rural South Salem home and seeing his name slide across the ticker at the bottom of the screen.

He called out to his wife: “Ohhh, I think we’ve got trouble here.”

The nation had just come to know Day as the Oregon judge who refused to marry same-sex couples.

And so began Day’s whirlwind. He soon found himself in the center of the debate over gay rights vs. religious freedom. The Oregon Supreme Court suspended him without pay for three years, an extraordinary rebuke for a state jurist. He faced criminal charges for allegedly allowing a known felon he befriended to handle guns.

This week, state prosecutors dropped their pursuit of the charges against Day because a key witness failed to show up the day before trial was to start. Day still faces a fight before the Oregon State Bar, which is investigating him and has the potential to strip the 57-year-old of his law license for life.

Day is now ready to talk about the turmoil and his frustration over what he sees as a false narrative about who he is: “That there’s this homophobic, angry, conservative religious nut on the Marion County Circuit Court.”

His legal bills have reached $1.2 million, forcing him to sell his longtime home set on 12 acres, as well as his 50 percent share in a Salem building where he once worked as an attorney, he told The Oregonian/OregonLive.

For most of the past year, he and his wife have lived in a fifth-wheel trailer in a Silverton RV park. The couple recently moved into the guest house of friends in Marion County, he said.

It’s a starkly different life than the one he had as a lawyer in private practice for 20 years or the stint he worked as chairman of the Oregon Republican Party from 2005 to 2009. In 2011, Democratic Gov. John Kitzhaber appointed Day to the bench. He was a judge for 6 ½ years before his suspension in March.

Day said he’s received hate mail since that first same-sex marriage story made headlines. He remembers letters filled with obscenities and jail bars photoshopped over a photo of himself.

But Day said he’s also experienced tremendous support. The vast majority of the daily mail he still receives offers encouragement, he said.

A "Defend Judge Day" campaign has raised -- by rough estimates -- $2 million so far. About $558,000 has gone to Day's legal expenses. Most of the rest has paid for fundraising fees, printing, postage and fundraising materials -- with some left in the bank.

“There are nearly 20,000 people across the nation who donated $5, $10 or $25,” he said. “I’m very grateful.”

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The donations have flowed despite scathing findings in 2016 from the Oregon Commission on Judicial Fitness and Disability that Day had "engaged in a pattern of dishonesty" to cover up assorted misconduct, including trying to intimidate a referee at his son's soccer game by shoving his judicial business card at him.

The Oregon Supreme Court earlier this year said Day's track record of making "false statements" suggests he "is not trustworthy."

The Supreme Court found that Day twice encouraged or gave permission to a felony drunken driving defendant, Brian Shehan, to handle a gun in November 2013 and January 2014. The court singled out as "exceptionally serious misconduct" what it said were false claims by Day that he hadn’t remembered that Shehan -- whom he supervised on probation in a veterans treatment court -- was a felon.

Judge Vance Day at Oregon Supreme Court hearing 8 Gallery: Judge Vance Day at Oregon Supreme Court hearing

Day said Shehan didn’t touch a gun in the first alleged case and he didn’t give Shehan permission in the second case. Day said it was his son who handed Shehan a gun at Shehan’s home in the second case.

Day and his son had gone there to help Shehan fix a broken pellet stove. Day said he looked over to see his son asking Shehan questions as Shehan held the gun. He said his son didn’t know Shehan was a felon.

“Does the law require me as a judge in that situation to say, ‘Hey Shehan, put down the gun?’” Day said. “I don’t think it does. And probably I should have done that. But I didn’t even remember that he was a felon. I wasn’t there with my judge robes on.”

Day said he wasn’t aware until seven months later that his son and Shehan also had gone target shooting with his son’s guns later that same January day.

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The Supreme Court also found that after a federal judge’s ruling legalized same-sex marriage in Oregon, Day in 2014 directed his staff to covertly investigate whether couples who requested that he marry them were the same gender. If they were, he asked staff to tell the couple that he wasn’t available, the Supreme Court found.

His staff discovered one couple who asked Day to marry them might be of the same sex, but their requested date fell at a time when Day really was unavailable, according to the Supreme Court summary of his case. Day stopped marrying all couples shortly after that.

Even though Day apparently never directly acted on the scheme, the Supreme Court found that he exhibited prejudice by developing it.

Day told The Oregonian/OregonLive he believes “marriage should be between a man and a woman” and he was conflicted about how to proceed after the legalization of same-sex marriage. He said he had asked his staff to investigate genders ahead of time to avoid embarrassing gay couples who might show up only to have Day turn them down.

But shortly after, Day said he decided it would be better to stop officiating weddings altogether.

He doesn’t think his actions amounted to prejudice or discrimination.

Many of Day’s supporters believe the system went after him because of his refusal to marry same-sex couples. Day won’t say he’s certain that’s the reason.

“I don’t want to say it’s retaliation because I don’t know their hearts,” Day said. “I just put two and two together from what the facts are.”

The Supreme Court “lacked spine” and “caved to public pressure” when it suspended him so quickly -- before Day’s criminal trial could air out all the evidence, he said.

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Lawyers had selected a jury for Day's trial and were set to give opening statements Wednesday in a Multnomah County courtroom. Day had asked to move the gun possession case from Marion County because he didn't think he could get a fair trial with jurors drawn so close to home given all of the publicity.

Late Tuesday afternoon, prosecutors with the Oregon Department of Justice asked to dismiss the case, explaining that Shehan wouldn't make himself available to testify. Shehan, who lives out of state, hadn't gotten onto an airplane to fly to Oregon.

“It was a big relief,” said Day, who had been planning on calling 30 witnesses during 2 ½ weeks of trial. He said he had looked forward to clearing his name.

Day thinks it’s possible state prosecutors intimidated Shehan – a decorated former Navy SEAL -- with a veiled threat that they might prosecute him if he didn’t testify against Day.

“He never should have been abused by the state of Oregon in trying to get to me,” Day said.

Reached by The Oregonian/OregonLive, Shehan declined comment.

But records show he has repeatedly tried to distance himself from the case -- by either refusing to return phone calls to investigators or show up to depositions. Officials with the Department of Justice said Shehan told his story repeatedly to the judicial fitness commission and later to a grand jury under oath and never wavered from the details.

Shehan said Day gave him permission to pick up the guns and that Day also gave him approval to target shoot with his son, according to records of Shehan’s previous statements.

“He has always been very clear on what happened,” Michael Slauson, chief counsel at the Department of Justice, said in a statement Friday.

Slauson described Shehan as a “brave and honorable man” who made “an extremely difficult decision” not to testify in Day’s trial. The Department of Justice honored his decision, Slauson said.

Slauson took issue with Day’s contention that the department used Shehan to get at him.

“The department has consistently treated Shehan the same way we would treat any victim -- with respect, empathy, encouragement and support,” Slauson said. “...There has never been even a hint of retaliation on the state's part and all witnesses and the defendant have been treated with the utmost respect throughout.”

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Over the past few years, Day said his lawyers have told him to be “extremely careful” about what he says. Now that the criminal charges have been dismissed, he’s at liberty to fully defend himself publicly.

“If they just talked to the people who know me -- my colleagues, even my gay and lesbian colleagues, who know how I act and how I live my life -- they would see a very different picture than this one-dimensional target that somehow has been placed on the wall and had darts thrown at it,” he said.

Day also is readying to fight the Oregon State Bar if it decides to move forward with a possible suspension or revocation of his license.

In the meantime, he plans to continue working as a part-time consultant guiding CEOs how to lead and manage their companies. He’s not sure if -- even if he wins at the state bar -- he will ever go back to working as a lawyer.

Day said he has no aspirations to ever work as a judge again.

-- Aimee Green