When prison staff told Natalia Hernandez in August she was being released early, she initially didn’t want to leave.
“At one point, I even begged them to stay,” she recently told lawmakers.
At the time, she didn’t know where she would live, work or continue substance-use treatment after leaving Coffee Creek Correctional Facility. Staff told Hernandez that her sentence had been recalculated because of an Oregon Supreme Court ruling. She left with a bus ticket, no money and nowhere to go.
Hernandez, who told her story in court filings and legislative testimony, was determined to stay out of prison. She got sober housing, a manufacturing job and reconnected with family. She got married. She’s expecting a baby in June.
Now she fears she will give birth to her son in prison — not due to her own actions, but rather because of state officials’ mistakes.
Hernandez, 25, is one of roughly two dozen people caught in the fallout from the Oregon Supreme Court’s ruling in the case Torres-Lopez v. Fahrion. The 2025 ruling prompted the Department of Corrections to recalculate prisoners’ sentences to credit their pre-trial jail time in cases where the sentencing judge had “expressly ordered” that.
DOC officials initially reduced hundreds of prisoners’ sentences by months or years, setting off a chaotic and politically fraught series of events. Prosecutors denounced shortened sentences, and prison officials soon reversed course, reincarcerating multiple newly freed prisoners — a move that some successfully challenged in court.
The fallout has reached the state Capitol, where lawmakers are considering legislation that would create a process for corrections officials to put people back in prison if they were released because of an erroneous sentencing calculation or flawed legal interpretation.
“My family and I now live in constant fear of being sent back to prison again, despite doing everything right,” Hernandez told the Oregon House Judiciary Committee. “My child should not have to live without his mother, and my husband should not have to live without a wife.”
Prosecutors say the fix would allow courts to restore punishments originally intended before the state Supreme Court’s ruling, while shielding crime victims from the unexpected release of their perpetrators.
DOC Director Mike Reese told lawmakers in January that applying the Torres-Lopez ruling has been complicated and has involved examining sentencing orders from 36 counties, some of which he described as “ambiguous.”
The bill would clarify when pre-sentence credit can be applied to a sentence, DOC spokesperson Amber Campbell said in an email. The biggest ambiguity still facing the department is how people released prematurely can be brought back into custody.
Brendan Murphy, a Marion County prosecutor speaking on behalf of the Oregon District Attorneys Association, told lawmakers that the ruling had created a “mess” for defendants and victims. He said the legislation would create a process that would allow people facing reincarceration to have their day in court.
“The court would be able to make a determination about whether or not DOC’s calculation was in line with the original sentencing court’s intent,” he said. “And then if it’s out of line, the court can make the decisions about how that individual goes back into custody.”
The association did not respond to Street Roots’ request for comment.
Bobbin Singh, executive director of non-profit law firm Oregon Justice Resource Center, said lawmakers are being asked to be complicit in what he called a “mind-boggling” abuse of executive power. He said the bill would mean prosecutors could try to send someone back to prison even after they’ve completed their sentence.
“This is the very type of abuse of executive power that the state of Oregon claims to be fighting at the federal level,” he said, referring to the Trump administration’s sweeps as part of its immigration crackdown.
Reincarcerated
Three years ago, Michael McEwen was in the hospital in Medford, talking to a police officer.
Court documents describe how earlier that day, he entered the Purple Parrot bar in nearby Central Point with his face covered and demanded $500 from the till. When the employee refused, he stuck his finger in his coat pocket and pretended to have a gun. The employee called for help, and two bar patrons subdued McEwen.
McEwen, then 22, was taken to the hospital for his injuries, where he told the officer the robbery was to support his fentanyl habit. He also said he didn’t want to hurt anyone and he was sorry.
A first-time offender, McEwen was sentenced in March 2024 to more than four years in prison and was later admitted to a substance-use treatment program at Powder River Correctional Facility.
While McEwen was serving his sentence, the Oregon Supreme Court issued its Torres-Lopez ruling. The case centered on Abraham Torres-Lopez, who was arrested on charges of identity theft and fleeing an officer. He spent a total of 125 days in jail before being sentenced to five years in prison, but the Department of Corrections only gave him credit for 82.
The Supreme Court, however, ruled Torres-Lopez was entitled to credit for the full 125 days because it was included in his original sentence.
The ruling was retroactive to 2015, which spurred corrections staff to conduct a manual review of sentences for more than 11,000 people. Just under 400 people saw their sentences adjusted, 40 of whom were immediately released.
That included McEwen, who was released in July 2025.
McEwen couldn’t be reached for comment. But his public defender, Amy Young, told lawmakers that “he did well after his release from prison.”
“He married, became a father and got a job,” she said. “He was in recovery.”
McEwen relocated to the Boise area to be closer to family. Craig Fronek, his father-in-law, said in an interview McEwen was rebuilding his life. He said the family was preparing to celebrate Christmas together when McEwen got a call from his probation officer, who told him to come in.
On Dec. 9, McEwen was taken into custody under an order issued by Oregon prison officials that found his early release had been a mistake and he was now considered an “escapee,” according to court documents.
All the excitement around the family celebrating their first Christmas together came to a screeching halt, Fronek recalled. That meant explaining to his 4-year-old grandson that his father wouldn’t be there to open presents on Christmas morning. His daughter couldn’t sleep, but still had to work and be a mom, he said.
“It threw our family into chaos,” he said. “Our family got caught in the crosshairs.”
The prosecution makes its case
McEwen was among the 22 people the Department of Corrections released, then reincarcerated, as officials took a second look at how the department was recalculating sentences. Specifically, the department revised its recalculations for people with consecutive sentences, crediting them for time served only once, instead of on each sentence. The department said that change was meant to remove the “duplicate time” credits it had included in its initial recalculations.
That second look followed growing backlash over the early release of people convicted of causing a serious car crash while driving impaired that injured multiple people, manslaughter, domestic violence, burglary and sex offenses — including against children.
Prosecutors and victims’ rights advocates assailed recalculations that shortened peoples’ sentences, arguing that officials gave dramatic reductions in prison time to people convicted of serious felonies, while victims didn’t get proper notice about their offender’s release.
Karen Garrison, of Grants Pass, told the House Judiciary Committee that she had been sexually abused and tortured by her offender for nearly five years. She recalled having to relive her trauma during almost six years of court dates that finally resulted in her offender being sentenced to nine years in prison.
“That judgment gave me something I needed: certainty,” Garrison said.
It also gave her time to heal and rebuild her life, she said. But in July, she received a voicemail notifying her that her offender had been released early. Within a day, she saw her offender within a mile of her house.
Jackson County District Attorney Patrick Green went to court in November, challenging the recalculated sentence of Joaquin Cowart, who was convicted of sexually abusing a child and sentenced to a total of 12 years in prison with an original release date in September 2029.
Green argued that the department released Cowart and others using a flawed interpretation of the Torres-Lopez ruling that was at odds with his sentence. After he sought to hold prison officials in contempt, the department reversed course. Cowart was taken back into custody last year.
Holding pattern
Hernandez’s determination to stay out of prison following her early release in August seemed to be paying off.
She had a job assisting in the manufacturing of joint replacement parts and was attending outpatient treatment in Oregon City. She was pregnant and preparing for a new life in Alabama, where her husband had secured a new job and bought a house.
While on vacation in Lincoln City with her husband in November, Hernandez received a phone call from the Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office telling her officers had been at her residence seeking to arrest her. The officer told her she was an “escaped inmate” who owed time on her conviction in Marion County for delivering meth and heroin, as well as unlawful use of a firearm.
Hernandez turned herself in the next day after never getting a chance to challenge her reincarceration, according to the petition seeking her release.
The Oregon Justice Resource Center and another attorney filed habeas petitions with the Oregon Supreme Court on behalf of Hernandez, McEwen and other people who had been reincarcerated. The petitions argued that prison officials did not have the legal authority to reincarcerate people they had already released and said their constitutional rights had been violated.
So far, the Supreme Court has granted the petitions, ordering the release of 10 of the 22 people who were reincarcerated, said Singh, the center’s director.
Singh called on the Supreme Court to issue a broader ruling that would release those who remain reincarcerated. The legislation being considered by lawmakers could also mean people like Hernandez and McEwen are again brought back to prison.
“The executive branch is basically just holding these people in custody as long as they can, until they can get some court or some official body to say that these people can be legally incarcerated,” he said.
DOC considers someone who has been released early from prison to be a “constructive escape,” meaning they are in the community while still owing time on their sentence, according to spokesperson Campbell.
She said prison officials have legal authority to bring those people back into custody, adding that they have the chance to voluntarily surrender and to challenge their incarceration by requesting an administrative review, filing a grievance or seeking representation from their attorney.
Hernandez was released the evening of Dec. 24, Christmas Eve. By then, her husband had already left for Alabama. This time, the Family Preservation Project, a group that works with incarcerated families, came to pick her up.
“My husband and I have lost so much, and we are financially drained,” she told lawmakers. “It feels like our lives have been put on hold for no reason and no fault of mine.”
This article appears in February 18, 2026.