She spent her more than 36-year Jackson County legal career prosecuting everything from domestic violence and drug crimes to homicides

By Buffy Pollock, Rogue Valley Times

Jackson County District Attorney Beth Heckert marked the final day of her third and last term in office on Monday.

Heckert, 62, spent the entirety of her more than 36-year Jackson County legal career prosecuting everything from domestic violence and drug crime cases to homicides, beginning in November 1988.

Planning to unplug and wholeheartedly embrace retirement, she told the Rogue Valley Times she was leaving the DA’s office “in capable hands.” Former Chief Deputy DA Patrick Green was sworn in as the county’s new top prosecutor Monday morning by Jackson County Circuit Court Judge Benjamin Bloom.

Green, elected in the May 21 primary election, garnered nearly 53% of more than 59,000 votes cast in his race against Alyssa Bartholomew of the Jackson County Public Defender’s Office.

Heckert endorsed Green in the election, citing confidence in his abilities as a detail-oriented prosecutor and saying that he would provide continuity. Like Heckert, who attended Southern Oregon State College and continued to live in the valley while attending law school at Willamette University before being hired by the county, Green’s entire professional career has been with the county DA’s office.

Heckert swore him in as a junior prosecutor in July 2016 following his 2015 graduation from Lewis & Clark Law School. In a touch of irony, Green, 35, has lived for about as many years as the length of Heckert’s career.

“I’m a representation of the length of Beth’s career. And all I’ve known is Beth as my boss,” Green said Friday, noting that when Heckert announced her retirement in October 2023, he wanted to provide continuity.

“I certainly did not have it on my radar, when I started, that I’d be DA, until the circumstances about two years ago came into play where it was like, ‘OK, somebody needs to step up to carry this forward.’”

Green is only the fifth district attorney for the county since the 1960s. He said the county has been fortunate with long-tenured DAs.

“There are a lot of communities around the state where the DA only does like one term, then they’re off doing something else or they didn’t get reelected,” Green said.

“Jackson County has never been like that, so that part is, I think, really good for the community and good for the office, too, that there’s that stability. … I never envisioned being in this position at this point in my career, but I’m honored to be, and I certainly have big shoes to fill.”

By the time she was first elected as DA, replacing longtime District Attorney Mark Huddleston upon his retirement 12 years ago, Heckert had already prosecuted some 40 homicide cases.

Noting one of the region’s most notorious and “one of the saddest cases I ever worked on,” Heckert had already been assigned chief prosecutor as the newly elected DA in what she considers one of her biggest cases — prosecution of Jordan Adam Criado for the 2011 stabbing deaths of his wife and four children in Medford.

Green’s biggest case to date starts next month. Former Asante nurse Dani Marie Schofield faces 44 counts of second-degree assault for her alleged role in replacing prescription fentanyl with non-sterile tap water at Rogue Regional Medical Center, causing harm to patients, 16 of whom died, according to an indictment.

Heckert said the Asante case could likely stick with Green the same way the Criado deaths impacted her and others in the office.

“It’s impossible not to be affected by the cases we see here. Of the murder cases I’ve handled, the Criado case is the one that still gets to me, because it just occurred down the street and because it was just awful. If fire engines go by, I still remember that day and wonder what’s happening,” she said Friday.

“We could hear everybody going by, then when we got the call, telling us what had happened, it was just really heartbreaking. Any time children are involved it just is super sad.”

Although the cases handled by her office usually involve serious and horrific crimes, Heckert points to decades of positive change, including working with the legal community and the Jackson County Circuit Court to help develop Mental Health Court, now known as Wellness Court, in 2015. Progress over the last decade with drug courts, she noted, has also been encouraging.

Another win for the judicial system, she said, was the passage of Senate Bill 819, which allowed resentencing of individuals convicted of non-expungeable crimes to be resentenced in instances where the sentence “no longer advances the interests of justice.”

“Say someone, who when they were 20 or 22 years old, committed a burglary in the first degree. Now they’re in their 50s, and they haven’t gotten into any additional trouble, but they can’t go on a field trip with their grandkids because they have a felony conviction,” she explained.

“We’re working with people when they’re in the worst part of their lives, so we don’t always hear the outcomes, how maybe their lives did turn around. I was in favor of that legislation when they passed it, because I thought a lot of people do deserve a second chance. Not everybody, but a lot do.”

In addition to supporting programs to help navigate the drug and mental health crises plaguing the region, Heckert’s three terms in office were marked by the addition of new prosecutors — despite a shortage of new law students entering the field and difficulty ensuring court-appointed representation is available for those being tried — and opening of a bigger office space at 815 W. 10th St. in Medford in 2017. A plaque bears her name on the outside of the building.

Heckert said recent months have been reminiscent of her first run for office in 2012; when she recalled past cases and hoped she left her mark on the region she calls home.

“Something that really surprised me when I ran 12 years ago, when we knocked on doors and we were talking to people, was how many people I ran across who had stories about cases I’d handled. At that point, I’d been in the office for a lot of years … so I ran across a lot of people who said, ‘You handled my daughter’s case,’ or ‘You handled my grandson’s case,’ or something like that,” she said.

“There have been so many cases — and we don’t always get to hear how things worked out — so to realize the impact that you had on people’s lives … really touched me.”

Focusing on her next chapter, Heckert plans to replace time spent dealing with drug and murder cases and other high-profile crimes to focus on gardening, family and travel.

“I feel good about it. I’m ready. I’ve been ready, I think, for a while. People have asked me things like, ‘How will you feel like you’re not in the know?’ … And I think I’ll be fine,” she said with a smile.

“I’m sure I’ll read about something in the paper, or see a news story, and I’ll be able to read through the lines.”

Leaving Green at the helm makes it easier to leave, she said. If given the chance, Heckert said she’d do it all over again.

“For me, it was, it’s been a really good career … and public service has been good for me, too,” she said. “I think public service is an honorable thing for someone to aspire to do.”

Reach reporter Buffy Pollock at 458-488-2029 or [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @orwritergal. This story first appeared in the Rogue Valley Times.