Oregon Police Officer Pleads Guilty to Forgery That Jeopardized White Supremacist Trial

An Oregon detective whose actions jeopardized the prosecution of two white supremacists involved in a three-state murder rampage in 2011 has pleaded guilty to forgery and official police misconduct.

Det. Dave Steele entered the double guilty pleas last week in Marion County Circuit Court in Salem, Ore., where he was sentenced to concurrent sentences of 18-months of probation by Judge Jamese Rhoades, the Oregonian reported.

As part of a plea bargain, Steele also agreed to resign from the Oregon State Police and surrender his police certification, making him ineligible to get another law enforcement job, the newspaper reported.

Steele was the lead state investigator in a federal criminal case brought against David “Joey” Pedersen and his girlfriend, Holly Grigsby, who were convicted of four murders in Washington, Oregon and California. The pair—targeting Jews and minorities—hoped to start a race war. Ultimately, they both entered guilty pleas in state court in Washington and federal court in Portland, Ore.

When they were sentenced earlier this year, senior U.S. District Judge Ancer Haggerty of Portland issued a blistering 63-page opinion criticizing the police investigator’s misconduct and federal prosecutors' “laissez-faire” approach to their legal obligations in the case.

The judge said the case was “mishandled by the (federal) prosecution team… very nearly jeopardizing this case altogether.”

“The most egregious misconduct was committed by Detective Steele,” the judge said. The opinion said the detective “was directly responsible for destroying and withholding Brady material (from defense attorneys), failing to catalog and turn over discovery, backdating evidence reports, lying to the (U.S. Attorney’s Office) regarding this conduct, intercepting and listening to privileged defense communications and filing a false declaration with this court.”

The judge said the life-sentences given to both Pedersen and Grigsby were appropriate for the crimes committed and “there is no evidence that either defendants' guilty plea was unfairly influenced by the government's conduct in this case.”

The police misconduct triggered investigations by the FBI and the Oregon State Police, including a review of other state criminal cases in Oregon handled by Steele going back to 2001. It’s unclear if federal charges also will be filed against Steele.

The Portland newspaper reported that Oregon State Police did not comment on the case until Wednesday when the agency released a statement saying the department “has taken this matter seriously since becoming aware of it by placing Detective Steele on administrative leave in December 2013, and requesting an outside agency begin a criminal investigation.”