Earl Bain, center, poses with Steve Wax, legal director of the Oregon Innocence Project, and Brittney Plesser, project senior staff attorney. Bain has been pardoned for a criminal conviction in Malheur County in 2009. (Oregon Innocence Project photo)
VALE – A former U.S. Army combat veteran and former area resident convicted of sexual abuse 11 years ago has been pardoned by Gov. Kate Brown.
Earl Bain was convicted of first-degree sexual abuse by a non-unanimous Malheur County jury in 2009 and spent six years in prison.
The pardon was the final chapter in a long legal battle where Bain, with the help of the Oregon Innocence Project, tried unsuccessfully to get his conviction overturned.
Bain’s conviction was nullified after a key witness in the case recanted her story in 2015. There was . . .
