Oregon Judge Andrew Erwin Soft on Lawyer Crime
Washington County catches and releases child porn offenders
***For the latest on this case click here
Welcome to Washington County, Oregon, where law enforcement and the District Attorney have a zero-tolerance policy for child porn, but where one judge keeps letting defendants off with mere probation. That judge is Andrew Erwin, who is otherwise known as a “tough sentencer.”
However, Judge Erwin is not just letting anyone off with a slap on their overworked wrists, he’s letting his fellow attorneys off.
It sounds bananas, but there have been enough lawyers appearing before Judge Erwin as defendants on child porn charges that we can make actual pie charts about his sentencing practices, and compare them to his sentences for non-lawyer pervs. At least one defense attorney has taken note as well.
The first such defendant to appear before Judge Erwin was Tualatin lawyer Scott McNutt Jr., who was indicted in August 2017 on ten counts of encouraging child sexual abuse in the first degree, a class B felony. According to court documents, McNutt was caught with several abhorrent files on his computer, some with victims as young as eight.
Nearly a year into the case, McNutt’s defense attorney moved to suppress evidence, which Judge Erwin granted. The state successfully appealed that order and it was remanded in March 2020. The appellate decision is a harrowing read.
Exactly four years after his indictment, McNutt finally pleaded guilty to all of the charges. Judge Erwin gave him five years of probation instead of the 41–45 months incarceration suggested in the Oregon sentencing guidelines grid.
About a half year after that wrist slap, McNutt got caught viewing more child porn. Judge Erwin then revoked his probation and sentenced McNutt to 45 months incarceration. He is currently serving that time at a minimum-security facility.
Amazingly, the first the public heard of McNutt’s case was after his probation violation, through a brief story that did not identify McNutt as a lawyer. It is not known how much lawyering McNutt did in those nearly five years before he reported to prison, but records show he was active in court cases through at least 2018.
As an important aside, the Oregon State Bar never moved to suspend McNutt after he pleaded guilty in August 2021 or after he reoffended in March 2022; nor did the Bar issue any press release about McNutt. Instead, the Bar allowed McNutt to quietly resign his law license in July 2022, and only printed a notice about his resignation last December… far too late to qualify as public protection.
Two months after McNutt pleaded guilty, perv number two arrived in court: Hillsboro lawyer Scott Gilfillan. Like his colleague, he was also charged with ten violations of the same statute, but his tastes apparently ran even younger: Gilfillan was caught with at least one pornographic image of a toddler on his computer.
Gilfillan pleaded guilty to all ten counts about seven months in. As he had with McNutt, Judge Erwin gave the lawyer defendant five years of probation rather than the three to four year prison sentence that the crimes warranted.
Like McNutt, there was not one single article written about Gilfillan’s arrest, guilty plea, or sentence of probation. We’ll see what happens if or when Gilfillan reoffends.
And just as they did with McNutt, the Bar did not seek Gilfillan’s suspension after his guilty plea, and issued no press release about him. Instead, the agency allowed him to resign his license in February 2023, almost a year after his conviction. The notice appeared in this month’s Bar magazine, which is how I noticed this fascinating pattern.
On April 8, 2022, just four days before Gilfillan’s guilty plea, the third lawyer creep was indicted. But he was not just a lawyer, he was Oregon’s Chief Administrative Law Judge, John Mann. Like the two who came before him, Mann was also charged with ten counts of child porn, for the revolting videos he apparently enjoyed, with victims as young as four.
Unlike his two colleagues, and due to the prominence of his position, Mann was unable to avoid the press. He was suspended without pay almost immediately.
Mann pleaded guilty to all ten counts last month, and is scheduled to be sentenced by Judge Erwin on May 11.
It remains to be seen what kind of sentence Judge Erwin will impose upon the disgraced lawyer and judge, but Mann’s defense attorney, Lawrence Taylor, seems to have an idea: Just two days before his client pleaded guilty, Taylor ordered an audio transcript from Scott McNutt’s criminal case.
It doesn’t seem like a winning strategy to bring up that case to Judge Erwin, since his leniency toward a colleague was not warranted, and the defendant is currently sitting in jail. But time after time we are reminded that some lawyers believe they are a special class of people — even when they are convicted of disgusting crimes — and that they should be sentenced accordingly.
Unlike his predecessors, however, Mann was quietly suspended by the Supreme Court less than a month after his guilty plea, and he will presumably resign his law license in the upcoming months. Despite that, the Bar has issued no press release. Mann remains free on bail.
None of this would mean much if we couldn’t compare Judge Erwin’s history of sentencing lawyer creeps with no criminal record to Judge Erwin’s history of sentencing mere mortal creeps with no criminal record.
Fortunately, we have a perfect example: Brett H. Cunningham, who was indicted in September 2020 in Washington and Multnomah County, in near-simultaneous cases, and who had no prior criminal history before that week.
Cunningham eventually pled out in both counties in January 2022. In Washington, Cunningham pleaded guilty to a single count of the same crime to which McNutt, Gilfillan, and Mann each pleaded guilty ten times; and Cunningham also pleaded guilty to one count of a less serious, class C felony. In Multnomah, Cunningham pleaded guilty to two more counts of class B felony encouraging child sexual abuse.
Judge Erwin sentenced non-lawyer Cunningham to sixteen months incarceration. He’s already out of prison.
Enough said.
