A 30-something man apparently thought he was doing nothing wrong when he lit up a joint in a Portland courtroom last month.

Marijuana is legal in Oregon, right?

That's what the unidentified man told two deputies, who immediately confronted him in the back row of the third floor courtroom of Multnomah County Circuit Judge Cheryl Albrecht. He had come in to watch a hearing into the shooting death of a 17-year-old boy at a Northeast Portland park.

Courthouse Deputy Chris Payne said he walked through a plume of smoke to get to the man and told him he needed to leave the courtroom. The man stepped into the hall.

“I said, ‘Sir, you need to leave the courthouse now,’” Payne recounted to The Oregonian/OregonLive. “He said, ‘Why?’ I said, ‘You can’t smoke marijuana in public.’ And he said, ‘Oh, you can’t?’”

Payne said the man seemed genuinely surprised. He also showed "signs of being high,” the deputy said.

Word of the July 21 encounter has reverberated through the courthouse community and astonished a broad cross-section of seen-it-all lawyers, judges, deputies and court staff.

Understand, this is a seasoned bunch. The 106-year-old courthouse regularly handles 800 to 1,000 daily visitors from all walks of life. In recent years, a man socked a handcuffed killer in the face in front of the judge and deputies. A registered sex offender wearing baggy pants exposed himself to women on one of the courthouse's floors. Late last month, two people were caught doing drugs and having sex in a seventh-floor restroom.

The county Sheriff’s Office, which staffs the courthouse, released surveillance video Monday at the request of The Oregonian/OregonLive that shows the man strolling into the courtroom about two hours into the hearing and taking a seat in the back row of the courtroom gallery -- just across the aisle from one of four deputies in the room.

Oregon voters legalized recreational marijuana starting July 1, 2015. The law says people 21 years and older can carry up to an ounce in public with them and grow up to four plants per household. The law also allows people to smoke it in their private homes -- but not in parks, on buses, on sidewalks or in other public venues, such as a government building.

Albrecht, the judge, said she noticed the deputies asking the man to leave. But she didn’t know why he was ejected.

“A couple of minutes later, I just smelled this strong smell of marijuana, and I don’t know where it’s coming from,” she said. “I look at the detective on the stand and think ‘It’s not him.’ And I look at my clerk, and I know it’s not her.”

“Never have I seen anything like that,” Albrecht said, and she's been a magistrate and a judge for 16 years.

Deputies didn’t get the man’s name. Nor did they try to issue him a citation.

Sgt. Barrett Taylor said the deputies that morning were focused on supervising the two murder defendants. The goal was to alleviate the problem, he said, and the deputies did just that by getting the man to leave.

During the next break, the deputies filled in the judge and the attorneys.

“To me, that guy is living proof that marijuana makes you stupid,” said Alicia Hercher, an attorney for one of the murder defendants. “It’s absolutely advertising for not smoking weed.”

-- Aimee Green