Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson is defending the 2021 plea deal given to a man now suspected of violent kidnapping, attempted murder, and two homicides in Oregon.
Benjamin Obadiah Foster, 36, was on the run for a week, eluding capture while police sought him out near the small southern Oregon town of Grants Pass. Police said Foster died after a self-inflicted gunshot wound during a Tuesday night standoff with law enforcement.
In a press conference on Wednesday, police revealed an additional two men were killed Monday night and Foster is now the suspect in that double homicide.
“Nobody can anticipate what somebody's going to do when they're released from prison. And it's sad,” District Attorney Wolfson said in an exclusive News 3 interview on Wednesday.
“It's not something that prosecutors like to learn about, that one of their offenders that we prosecuted went to another jurisdiction and committed a very serious crime. Of course, we're not happy about that. But we couldn't foresee that at all.”
On Jan. 24, Grants Pass Police Department found a woman unconscious, bound, and near death, launching the days-long manhunt, according to KTVL news.
Foster had ties to Las Vegas, with multiple cases against him from 2017 and 2019 with similar charges including kidnapping and domestic battery, amongst others. Had he been convicted of the five felonies brought against him in 2019, he could’ve served decades behind bars.
Instead, Foster reached a deal with Clark County prosecutors in 2021, a plea bargain for a guilty charge on one count of felony domestic battery and a misdemeanor. He was sentenced to a maximum of 2 1/2 years in prison, but a judge ruled his two years spent in jail while awaiting trial counted as time served.
Wolfson said plea bargains occur in 99% of cases and that’s the nature of the criminal justice system.
“A plea bargain isn't necessarily a bad thing, because a person is pleading guilty,” he said. “They're accepting responsibility, and many people that plead guilty, in a plea bargain, get punished and are sent to prison every single day in this courthouse.”
Wolfson said the Foster case was difficult to prosecute because there was an “uncooperative victim,” who refused to testify in court. He added it’s a consistent struggle in domestic violence cases because victims fear coming forward for a variety of reasons.
Wolfson said despite the difficulty in Foster’s prosecution, his team did well in securing a conviction. The DA showed Foster’s criminal case file, which was a thick stack about three times the size of a typical case file.
“We were in a situation where we had no choice,” he said. “When you have somebody that doesn't want to come to court, we have to present evidence in a courtroom, we have to present witnesses in the courtroom. And if I have somebody that doesn't want to participate, I have no choice. I mean, actually, recognizing all of those factors, my prosecutor did a good job.”
For those experiencing domestic violence, call 9-1-1 if there’s immediate danger or dial 800-799-7233 for the National Domestic Violence Hotline.
Local groups such as SafeNest (702-646-4981) or S.A.F.E. House offer services for victims of domestic violence: