Convict wants to put Deschutes DA on trial

From his cell in the federal correctional institution in Sheridan, Oregon, Brent Steven Sherman, Sr. has apparently given Deschutes County District Attorney Michael Dugan and the State of Oregon yet another lesson in the law.

In the last two years, Sherman, who once had an office in Sisters, has bested prosecutors in Deschutes County and Clatsop County while defending himself against criminal charges.

Now, Sherman, again representing himself, is on the offensive.

Brent Sherman alleges that D.A. Dugan has never complied with an order from Judge Stephen Tiktin, issued on August 15, 1996, to turn over to Sherman copies of records seized in police raids on Sherman's business and home in 1994 and 1995, in Sisters and in Bend, Oregon.

Sherman says that not having the documents has kept him from operating his various businesses. Sherman is demanding $1.3 million from Dugan "as reimbursement for personal and business losses as a result of his contempt," for Tiktin's order.

Sherman says that FBI and Internal Revenue Service records verify the loss.

Sherman is asking that Dugan "be incarcerated until I am compensated for my personal and business losses, and until Judge Tiktin's order (to turn over copies of the documents) is fulfilled."

Sherman is asking that Dugan be fined $500 "for every day, until he complies with Judge Tiktin's order."

Sherman is asking for $10,000 to cover "the cost of my efforts to enforce the court's order."

Dugan's attorney in the contempt case, Assistant Attorney General Robert Peterson, tried to argue in the August 28 summary judgment hearing in Tiktin's chambers that only the state can bring criminal contempt charges.

Tiktin pointed out to Peterson that Sherman was making a civil, not criminal, contempt claim. Sherman was asking for remedial, civil sanctions against Dugan, not criminal, punitive ones.

According to witnesses at the hearing, Peterson told Tiktin, "Gee, your honor, I didn't know that," and asked the court not to penalize his client, Dugan, for this oversight.

Peterson asked the judge for 10 more days to reply to the contempt claims, which Tiktin granted.

"It's as if they aren't reading my claims," Sherman later told private investigator, Stuart A. Steinberg, who is working with Sherman on the case.

Steinberg is also a lawyer. He taught law for two years at Georgetown University and worked as a lawyer in Massachusetts for seven years, including a stint as a public defender in Boston.

Steinberg said Sherman questions whether prosecutors are taking Sherman seriously enough. Steinberg said that while some of Sherman's legal work may be "inartfully drafted, he has whumped these guys twice already."

Sherman is doing his legal work from the federal correctional institution in Sheridan because he had been on parole after serving 10 years for a bank robbery conviction. His parole was revoked after he was charged in Deschutes County with drug possession, robbery, burglary, theft by extortion and coercion.

The drug possession charge followed a raid on Sherman's offices in Bend, where he had opened "Exotic Entertainment," an agency for strippers, across Greenwood Avenue from the Deschutes County Courthouse.

The robbery, theft by extortion and coercion charges followed an incident in 1995 when Sherman brought a baseball bat into the offices of his former attorney, Jonathan Basham, and demanded that Basham return $10,000 Sherman claims his family was overcharged by the lawyer.

The drug possession charges were dropped. Sherman claimed the drugs were from an employee who had been fired because of her drug use.

Then Sherman, acting as his own attorney, forced dismissal of the other charges against him as Deschutes County bobbled his case, finally losing control when they tried to bring Sherman out of federal custody and back to Deschutes County twice to face the same charges, in clear violation of the "Interstate Agreement on Detainers Act."

Nearly one year after the police raids on Sherman's offices and home in Bend, in which aircraft radios were seized, charges were brought against Sherman in Clatsop County for theft of those radios.

Sherman was planning to call as many as 30 witnesses in the radio theft case, and had subpoenaed Dugan and his records.

Charges were dropped in Clatsop County before trial. Clatsop County District Attorney Josh Marquis, formerly an assistant D.A. under Dugan in Deschutes County, said that the charges were dropped because the cost of an involved prosecution would far outweigh the benefit to the people of Oregon.

Sherman claims the charges were dropped because he would have used the Clatsop County case to prove improprieties Bend Police and Oregon State Police detectives, possibly including perjury.

In addition to the contempt of court proceedings against Dugan, Sherman has filed a complaint against him with the Oregon State Bar.

If Sherman is not granted a summary judgment on the contempt proceedings, a trial is scheduled for September 26.