Oregon State Hospital

On Dec. 30, The Oregonian published a front-page article about Oregon’s handling of people found “guilty except for insanity.” The in-depth examination, by the Malheur Enterprise and ProPublica, was prompted by the case of Anthony Montwheeler, who was charged in 2017 with killing two people shortly after his release by Oregon’s Psychiatric Security Review Board.

A reader inquiry prompted ProPublica to review the underlying data and assertions. The Oregonian published a shortened version of the article, which had been updated Dec. 12, and that version contained several significant errors, according to ProPublica’s review.

First, the initial report said people released from board supervision were charged with felonies more often than people freed after serving prison terms: 23 percent within three years of release, compared to 16 percent for ex-convicts. Both numbers are wrong.

Importantly, insanity defendants do not have a higher rate of being charged with felonies within three years than ex-convicts. The true rate is 16 percent for insanity defendants, according to ProPublica.

The state does not track the number of former prisoners charged with felonies after they are freed. The rate cited in the article arose from a misreading of state records.

It is possible to compare the rates of felony convictions between people freed from prison and from PSRB oversight. ProPublica’s review found 8 percent of people released by the board were convicted of new felonies in Oregon within three years, compared with 29 percent of those freed from prison.

ProPublica said the original calculation was inflated by multiple mistakes, such as including misdemeanors and crimes outside the three-year window.

Second, the article said Oregon released people found not guilty by reason of insanity from supervision and treatment “more quickly than nearly every other state.” ProPublica said its review did not support that characterization.

Last, the article reported that people released from board supervision had been charged with assaults involving first responders (at least 75), family members (44), service workers (13) and others. ProPublica’s review found violent incidents in each category, but it could not replicate the numbers cited in the original article.

A central assertion of the article holds up: The board’s only published statistic on recidivism — that 0.46 percent of people under supervision commit crimes — does not capture the reality of what happens once that supervision ends. The board has acknowledged that it does not track those outcomes.

According to a correction published Friday by the Malheur Enterprise and ProPublica, they re-examined the cases of 419 people who had been freed before Oct. 15, 2015. They were free for at least three years, a frequently used metric in academic studies of recidivism. The recidivism rate for that group is 16 percent.

“The errors in our stories are regrettable, particularly at a time when the accuracy and fairness of news organizations is under constant assault,” a correction published Friday said. “We hope that Oregonians can look beyond them to the essential findings described above.”

The Oregonian occasionally reprints articles from the Malheur Enterprise, whose editor, Les Zaitz, is a former editor and investigative reporter for the newsroom. The article was part of ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network initiative.

— The Oregonian/OregonLive

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Anthony Montwheeler, charged in deaths after release