Ashland High’s Truth to Power club calls for rally after jury finds Robert Keegan guilty of manslaughter, not murder
Ashland.news staff report
A protest is planned for 5 p.m. Wednesday on Ashland Plaza after the acquittal of Robert Paul Keegan, a 50 year old white man, of second-degree murder charges in the 2020 killing of Aidan Ellison, a 19-year-old Black man, in the parking lot of an Ashland hotel. The rally comes two days after Keegan was found guilty on a lesser charge, first-degree manslaughter, and two days before he’s to be sentenced.
Keegan faced a life sentence if convicted on the murder charge. The manslaughter conviction comes with a 10-year minimum sentence. As reported in the Rogue Valley Times, 11 of the 12 jurors voted to acquit on the murder charge, with one voting guilty. The verdict was unanimous on the manslaughter charge.
A Jackson County jury took more than two hours to convict Keegan of recklessly endangering another person and unlawful possession of a firearm. Judge Timothy Barnack is scheduled to sentence Keegan at 11 a.m. Friday at Jackson County Courthouse in Medford.
Keegan has already served two and a half years in jail.
Ashland High School’s Truth to Power club is organizing the protest on Wednesday, according to an announcement shared Tuesday by the Ashland Together organization.
“Nothing about Aidan’s murder can ever be made right, or fair, or OK,” Truth to Power member Amy Preskenis Perrin said in a statement issued with the announcement. “What we call for is justice; a recognition of what Keegan did and punishment for his actions. Without punishment for murder, for stealing an innocent life, this conviction isn’t justice.”
Ellison was slain on Nov. 23, 2020, in the parking lot of the Stratford Inn after playing loud music early in the morning. Keegan took a firearm downstairs and, after a series of interactions, shot Ellison. Ellison ran off and was found by law enforcement in the bushes near the hotel, according to reporting by the Rogue Valley Times on trial testimony.
Clint Oborn and Alyssa Bartholomew spoke to reporters after the verdict was announced on Monday.
“First thing is, there were no offers ever made on this case — zero,” Oborn said in the Times report, referring to plea bargains. “The only offer was going to be life.”
Oborn said he believes the case could have been resolved without a trial and Keegan could have been sentenced on first-degree manslaughter.
“Now it has, but (only) after dragging people through five days of trial, dragging an
11-year-old child through trial,” Oborn said, referring to Keegan’s son who testified in the trial last week.
Keegan’s son was nine years old at the time of the crime and was upstairs when his Dad shot Ellison.
Bartholomew expressed disappointment in the Jackson County District Attorney’s office, saying multiple other cases worse than Keegan’s have been resolved through a plea bargain.
Bartholomew noted that first-degree manslaughter carries a mandatory-minimum sentence of 10 years in prison under Measure 11.
“He’s done two and a half years, so he’s looking at probably seven years (and) seven months more to go,” Bartholomew said.
Asked about the circumstances of the case — Keegan is white, while Ellison was Black — Bartholomew said the case was “never about race.” The FBI investigated and found no link between Ellison’s death and the color of his skin.
During a panel discussion with Urban League of Portland Chief Executive Officer and President Nkenge Harmon Johnson in Ashland last August, she had this to say about the case:
“This is a story we’ve heard again and again, in community after community,” Harmon Johnson said. “Something that should have been nothing at all, perhaps a passing moment, turns into a deadly situation, and often it’s for a Black or brown person who is not empowered at that moment to save their own life. They are killed at the hand of someone who thinks they have the right to do it, perhaps very much because of the color of the skin of their victim.”
Organizers of the local protest are asking individuals who support Ellison to write and deliver letters to Judge Barnack.
“I ask for the maximum sentencing for Keegan,” said Ashland City Councilor Gina DuQuenne, in a rally news release. “Aidan is dead forever.”
Reach Ashland.news reporter Holly Dillemuth at hollyd@ashland.news.
