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Jo County cases will be tried in Medford Disputed briefings force transfer From staff and wire reports GRANTS PASS - The Josephine County district attorney has given up defending 260 indictments handed up by grand juries that received secret background briefings, and has turned over the cases to Jackson County. After consulting with the Oregon State Bar and the Oregon Department of Justice, Josephine County District Attorney Clay Johnson said he had to withdraw from the cases because he and members of his staff testified in the court challenge brought by a group of defense attorneys. Under the rules of the Oregon bar, once a lawyer is subpoenaed in a case, the lawyer and anyone else in the law firm are off the case. "This is inconvenient and slows down the process significantly," Johnson said. It also will add 13 percent to the workload of the 16 prosecutors in Jackson County, where District Attorney Mark Huddleston said he agreed to take the cases from Josephine County. The only other options, Huddleston said, were to ship them to Klamath, Douglas or Curry counties. "For a lot of reasons," Huddleston said, "it makes sense for this office to deal with those cases." Huddleston said his office will bill Josephine County for any out-of-pocket expenses accrued from taking the cases, but he will not bill for the time spent on cases by his prosecutors, who are all salaried employees. Instead, he said, the two counties intend to work out some sort of attorney trade so Josephine County prosecutors can handle some cases here in return. A group of defense attorneys had challenged the indictments because the grand juries heard background briefings on drugs and sex abuse from detectives and counselors who were not sworn as witnesses or noted in records of the proceedings. Oregon assistant attorneys general Brenda Rocklin and Eric Wassman will handle oral arguments in the case scheduled for May 3 in Josephine County court before Benton County Presiding Judge Robert S. Gardner, who was asked to hear the case. Once the pending court challenge to the indictments is settled, prosecution will be handled by Huddleston. Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.