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PORTLAND, Ore. (Pamplin Media Group) — A former Clackamas County detective convicted of participating in a 2011 home-invasion robbery is seeking withdrawal of all charges on claims of an unfair trial after serving nearly six years in prison.
Floyd William Marsh Jr., 65, was originally indicted for eight charges in 2014 after he was implicated by a former longtime friend Gerald Wiese as a participant in an October 2011 robbery in which a woman was stun-gunned and left tied up in a coat closet. When Wiese implicated Marsh, Wiese was in prison on drug charges unrelated to the home-invasion robbery.
A former detective with the sheriff’s office for 25 years until 2007, Marsh was sentenced to six years and 10 months in prison with an original release date of March 3, 2023. In 2017, a jury convicted him on four charges: second-degree robbery, first-degree burglary, first-degree aggravated theft and money laundering.
On Feb. 23, over five-and-a-half years into Marsh’s prison sentence, the 2017 judgement was vacated, and he was granted future retrial after his attorneys raised new claims that information was withheld from the jury by prosecutor Russell Amos, according to court records. On behalf of Amos, Clackamas County Deputy DA Chris Owen declined to comment on the case pending retrial.
Marsh was released from prison on April 6, when Circuit Judge Todd L. Van Rysselberghe concurred with Marsh’s attorney that that a $250,000 bail was too high, reducing it to $100,000.
Marsh’s family posted $10,000 to satisfy the state-required 10% deposit for release on bail. Marsh’s attorney successfully pushed to postpone the retrial date, originally set for April 20, to Dec. 6.
Marsh’s wife, Connie, said that his early release allows the family and their legal team to take more time in preparing for the retrial while Marsh recovers from multiple strokes Connie said he has experienced since 2020, including two within the past six months.
“It’s always been a race against time to get him out before something major happens,” Connie said, adding that Marsh also caught COVID amid “very unhealthy” conditions while incarcerated. “So far, the pressure has been: ‘Will Floyd live or not?’ That’s a lot of pressure on us.”
Connie said her husband’s experience in prison was not easy; although Marsh got along with the guards and fellow prisoners, his health has continued to suffer. While in prison, Marsh contracted COVID in March 2020, then he experienced his first stroke in 2020. Connie said that Marsh also had a cardiac arrest in June after being released from prison.
Marsh’s attorney, Shannon M. Kmetic, testified during the hearing that because Marsh has been incarcerated for the case in Oregon since May 2016, he had “effectively served” the five-year, 10-month sentence associated with second-degree robbery, the most severe of the four charges.
Kmetic on June 4 filed a motion with the Clackamas County Circuit Court to disclose the grand jury records of all witness statements resulting in Marsh’s 2017 conviction, claiming inconsistency between Weise’s statements to detectives during interviews and to the grand jury during trial.
Oregon law says grand jurors under oath are required to keep secret the content of any proceedings before them, but exceptions may be granted if there are potential inconsistencies between the testimony of a witness at a criminal trial and before the grand jury, or when “permitted by the court in furtherance of justice.”
In her motion, Kmetic claimed that “the grand jury notes will reveal that Gerald Weise told the grand jury a significantly different story than he told detectives,” additionally claiming that “his grand jury testimony was inconsistent with any statement provided to defendant and is therefore exempt from the ‘secrecy’ considerations” of state law.
A hearing on Kmetic’s motion was originally scheduled for June 27, then rescheduled for July 11. That hearing scheduled for July 11 was canceled, so Marsh is awaiting instructions from the court to attend potential future pre-trial hearings.