was known for his dedication to cases with child victims and has a proven track record of scoring convictions. Brown said Tuesday she respected Mickley’s work.

The jury ultimately delivered a mixed verdict in the trial, convicting Rich of first-degree criminal mistreatment and other charges, but acquitting him of first-degree assault.

Brown sentenced Rich, now 36, to six years behind bars — about a year longer than the state’s recommendation. The defense attorneys appealed, and Oregon Department of Justice attorneys have conceded that Rich’s punishment is overlong based on the conviction and should be reversed, court records show.

The state appellate court hasn’t ruled yet. Rich remains in custody.

Fisher, the law professor from Florida, said Brown’s back-and-forth with Baggio was unfortunate but hardly unusual. He said judges must hold themselves to high standards in their public comments, though it’s to be expected that they would be less filtered in private.

“I bet you dollars to donuts that the people in the DA’s office do the same thing about the judges, and maybe with good reason,” Fisher said. “It’s just human nature.”

Multnomah County Circuit Court Judge Adrian Lee Brown A photograph of a baby gate was displayed in court during the child abuse trial of Samuel Rich in 2022.Court Exhibit ‘Any judge can be voted out’ Beyond Brown, Vasquez isn’t afraid to step before a microphone when he dislikes a ruling — and, like any good lawyer, he marshals the facts that best fit his case, while others get cut for time.

The DA publicly took aim at Judge Katharine von Ter Stegge last year when, in a bench trial of a scofflaw driver whose road antics had gone viral, she acquitted on some counts. Vasquez slammed the judge for sentencing Oscar Burrell to probation.

He let it go unsaid that his prosecutor also recommended a probationary punishment during the sentencing hearing.

In July, Vasquez hit out at Judge Angela Lucero when she downgraded a felony conviction to an expungeable misdemeanor for Darrell Kimberlin, a self-proclaimed anarchist guilty of vandalizing the Democratic Party of Oregon headquarters.

The six-minute-long hearing was light on dramatics, with Kimberlin’s defense attorney highlighting that her client was working as a cybersecurity programmer thanks to his employer’s second-chance policy.

In a subsequent press release, Vasquez didn’t mention that Kimberlin had paid back $49,000 in restitution. In a later interview with The Oregonian/OregonLive, Vasquez questioned if Kimberlin really put up the funds himself and said the saga of destruction during the pandemic-era unrest had inflicted incalculable harm to the city’s reputation.

Vasquez makes no apologies for this aggressive stance.

“Judges are elected officials, and the community deserves to know what their elected officials are doing,” he said. “I may be voted out in a few years if I’m not doing my job, and quite frankly, any judge can be voted out if they’re not doing their job.”

Brown has every reason to expect to keep hers.

While campaigning in 2020 in a crowded field of candidates, Brown touted her ability to make unpopular decisions, citing her work on the city’s settlement agreement as something that lost her friends around the office.

“It’s extremely important for a judge to be someone who’s willing to make unpopular decisions,” she said during that campaign.

This time, with the deadline to file for office less than one week away, Brown is running unopposed.