Author: Michael Strickland

Hello there. I feel I have a moral obligation to tell the story of how Oregon lawyer Jason Short screwed me over. My name is Michael Strickland. If that name is familiar, allow me to refresh your memory. I was the news videographer who was attacked in the street while at work on July 7th,…

After initially being released on recognizance at about 4:23 AM the next morning and charged with two misdemeanors of Menacing and Disorderly Conduct, I was instructed to show up later that afternoon for an arraignment. This was all new to me as I had never been arrested before, never previously charged with a crime, and…

During the 11 days I was in jail, Chris Trotter visited me once. During that visit he informed me that the price was going up 250% from what he had originally told me, because it was now a felony case. At one point a bail reduction hearing was scheduled for Monday, July 17th, 2016. In…

On August 4th, about a week after the grand jury testimony, Jason Short’s junior assistant, Chris Trotter, called to tell me I had been indicted. But he left out some important additional information. Later that afternoon, I saw a post by Oregon Firearms Federation that had a link to the Oregonian article about me being…

It wasn’t until about a month later that we finally received copies of the evidence, referred to as “discovery” in legal terms. This included all of the police reports associated with the event, phone call interviews detectives conducted with witnesses, emails that were sent in from other witnesses, and, most importantly, several video angles. This…

So this brings us to January of 2017. I was finally able to get Chris Trotter and Jason Short to respond to some of the things I had mentioned and brought up. They finally addressed the previously mentioned Harry Bray case, where the higher courts ruled that the defense has a right to text messages,…

On January 30th there was a hearing to go over pre trial motions. Of course in his now-customary habit, Jason Short decided he’d skip out on this and instead send the much less experienced Christopher Trotter to argue these motions in front of the judge. If memory serves, this was another one of those instances…

As the trial was approaching, we received the list of witnesses that the prosecutors intended to call during the trial. These consisted mostly of the witnesses they had during the grand jury proceedings. However there was one glaring omission. We will call this witness K.T. to protect his identity. K.T., as it turned out, was…

The trial got underway, and for some inexplicable reason, Jason Short agreed to the summary statement of: “On July 7th, 2016, on the steps of the Justice Center, a couple of blocks away from the courthouse here, there was a “Don’t shoot PDX” protest involving a large crowd. Mr. Strickland was in the crowd filming…

When the trial had finally gotten underway and witnesses were being called, district attorneys Kate Molina and Todd Jackson called John Barnett Slaughter to the stand. You may remember Slaughter as the one who filed the phony police report from an entirely separate non matter that Molina presented as fact. Well, it turns out he…

On the second day of the trial, the state’s star witness and chief “victim,” Ben Kerensa, was called to the stand. This was the 400 pound guy who had organized and led the mob to attack me, and was the one yelling at me to “GET THE F*** OUT OF HERE!” while shoving me after…

During the Ben Kerensa testimony, there came a point where Kerensa testified that he had exchanged multiple emails with police about the incident. These emails were never included in discovery. We never got copies of them. It’s odd that several other emails from witnesses who were down the block and hardly saw anything were included…

As the week went on, there were several things that left me perplexed and wondering why Jason Short and Chris Trotter weren’t doing more to fight for me. Prior to the trial, Short and Trotter told me they were going to motion for acquittal after the state’s case in chief, because the state would likely…

In the lead up to the trial, an antifa-associated terrorist group openly plotted to interfere with the trial, threaten myself, threaten witnesses, and vowed to “stop Michael Strickland” in a Facebook event page. They continued down the false trope of calling me a “white nationalist” (whatever that means), and claiming that I went to events…

Remember how I had posted about the discussion as to who would serve as the expert witness in the case who could testify as to what a person with a Concealed Handgun License is trained to do? Well, Jason Short insisted that this person be their firm’s private detective, Jason Servo. If you recall, Short…

After Jason Servo’s trainwreck of a testimony that could have been avoided had Jason Short used an expert witness who had actually trained me, the judge allowed deputy DA’s Todd Jackson and Kate Molina to present a rebuttal witness. This was partially due to the line of questioning by Chris Trotter with Servo, where Trotter…

After Officer Rasmussen testified, it was time for both sides to actually rest. For real this time. The videos were played for the judge again, each of them, from start to finish straight through. Then Todd Jackson made his closing arguments for the prosecution. Surprisingly, they pull any last minute stunts or ambushes. After Jackson’s…

Despite being just convicted of 21 counts of not harming a so much as a fly, the judge did not order me back into custody. Instead he set sentencing out nearly three months and ordered a pre-sentence investigation (PSI), along with psychological exam, which was to include “an analysis of what is likely to reduce…