The entrance of Coffee Creek Correctional Facility in Wilsonville, Oregon’s only women’s prison. (Ben Botkin/Oregon Capital Chronicle)
Terri Lee Brown’s life spun upside down in February, when the state of Oregon illegally sent her to Coffee Creek Correctional Facility.
The 48-year-old Grants Pass woman never saw it coming.
She had finished parole in 2023 after her early release from prison in December 2020 as part of a wave of commutations granted during the pandemic to nearly 1,000 inmates. In Brown’s case, she was released eight months early while serving a five-year sentence for mail theft. A little more than two years later, Brown’s parole officer gave her a certificate of completion in February 2023.
Brown proudly hung the certificate on her kitchen wall as she continued to rebuild her life. She became a home health care worker, tending to the needs of bedridden people in her Grants Pass community. At nights, she worked as a hotel auditor to make ends meet.
About a year after she received her certificate, Brown’s life crashed down when police showed up at her house, notifying Brown there was a warrant out for her arrest. Gov. Tina Kotek had issued an order revoking her commuted sentence and sending her back to prison.