QuickTake:

A Eugene woman is suing the Oregon Department of Corrections for $1.9 million, alleging the agency should have released her from prison more than three years before it did.

A Eugene woman alleges the Oregon Department of Corrections imprisoned her for more than three years longer than her sentence allowed — and now is suing the agency for $1.9 million.

For the last year, Bridget McDermott has been rebuilding her life in Eugene since her abrupt release in April 2024 from Coffee Creek Correctional Facility in Wilsonville, Oregon’s women’s prison. For 14 years, prison officials told McDermott she would not be eligible for release until at least October 2024. 

That changed suddenly. On April 3, 2024, a release counselor at the prison surprised her with word that the agency head “really screwed up” and she needed to leave immediately, according to McDermott’s lawsuit, filed Tuesday in Lane County Circuit Court. 

The lawsuit seeks $1.9 million for a variety of reasons, including illegal incarceration, lost wages and lost veterans benefits for McDermott, who served in the Army and was honorably discharged. 

In 2010, she entered prison after she was sentenced in Lane County for three counts of first-degree robbery, one count of first-degree kidnapping, one count of first-degree burglary and one count of being a felon in possession of a firearm. At the time, McDermott was addicted to prescription medication and was attempting to steal an animal euthanasia solution in a suicide attempt, her lawsuit said. 

“A day in custody feels like an eternity,” McDermott said in a statement. “When you find out you’ve been kept years longer than you should have been, the sense of betrayal and loss is hard to describe. I was honestly surprised the ODOC didn’t just lie about it, and I wonder how many other people this happens to.” 

Amber Campbell, a spokesperson for the corrections agency, declined to comment on the lawsuit.

McDermott’s release date changed after an appeals case filed by another inmate challenged how the Oregon Department of Corrections calculates release dates and takes time off sentences for good behavior, also called earned time credits. 

Some types of criminal charges are eligible for earned time credit and other types of charges are not. That gets complicated because incarcerated people often are serving time for charges that run concurrently with each other. 

An inmate challenged that in court and won. The 2021 Oregon Court of Appeals ruling led the Oregon Department of Corrections to change its policy so inmates would get time off for sentences, even when they ran concurrently with other charges that don’t qualify for earned time credits.

The Oregon Department of Corrections is responsible for calculating sentence dates, including factors such as concurrent and consecutive sentences and time credits. The agency previously told the Oregon Capital Chronicle that it reviewed 2,641 cases after it changed its policy to look for inmates who qualified for an early release. It found five people who were released immediately.

Because of the court ruling, McDermott was eligible for a 36-month reduction in her 10-year sentence for burglary. That should have reduced her 16-year sentence to 13 years, the lawsuit said. 

And because her credit for time served started in 2009 shortly after her arrest, the Oregon Department of Corrections conceded she should have been released July 5, 2022, the lawsuit said. McDermott’s lawsuit alleges her release should have been even sooner — in January 2021 — because of ambiguity in how the court structured her sentence. 

Either way, McDermott was surprised when she found out she had to leave the prison immediately. She begged to stay for one more night so she could quickly make plans, the lawsuit said.

Her sudden release also meant that she didn’t have a plan in place for after her incarceration; inmates usually make that plan in the months leading up to their discharge.

As a result, McDermott had to spend several months in a halfway house with difficult living conditions, the lawsuit said. She’s now in stable housing and working as a transit bus driver and signed up for classes at the University of Oregon, with plans to get a master’s degree in social work.

The nonprofit Oregon Justice Resource Center, which advocates for incarcerated people and better conditions in prisons, is representing her in the lawsuit.  

“Bridget was robbed of more than three years of freedom because the Oregon Department of Corrections failed to do its most basic job in correctly calculating her sentence,” said Ben Haile, senior counsel with the center’s Civil Rights Project at the Oregon Justice Resource Center who is representing McDermott.

“This is much more than a clerical error, it was a prolonged, unlawful incarceration that caused serious harm. ODOC’s own admission that it held her nearly two years too long is damning, and the evidence shows it should have released her even earlier. Then, when the wrongdoing was realized, there was no plan in place to handle Bridget’s sudden release or provide her with the support she was entitled to.”

Ben Botkin covers politics and policy in Lane County. He has worked as a journalist since 2003, most recently at the Oregon Capital Chronicle, where he covered justice, health and human services and documented regional efforts to combat fentanyl addiction. Botkin has worked in statehouses in Idaho, Nevada, Oklahoma and, of course, Oregon. When he's not working, you'll find him road tripping across the West, hiking or surfing along the Oregon Coast.