Five defendants in Deschutes County, Oregon, were exonerated in 2025 after the district attorney said that Sheriff Kent Vander Kamp provided false information about his academic credentials at their trials or in other official proceedings.
The cases for these five defendants took place between 2013 and 2017, when Vander Kamp was a sheriff’s deputy. He began working for the sheriff’s office in 2008 and was a sergeant with an interagency drug task force prior to his election as sheriff in 2024.
Vander Kamp announced his candidacy for sheriff on October 26, 2023, after Sheriff Shane Nelson declined to seek another term. Nelson endorsed Captain William Bailey. On December 6, 2023, Oregon’s Department of Public Safety Standards and Training (DPSST) received a complaint about Vander Kamp and later opened a formal investigation in 2024.
The complaint said that Vander Kamp had been dishonest in describing his work history in forms he submitted to Deschutes County between 2008 and 2017. Specifically, according to a later DPSST report on the investigation, Vander Kamp had omitted that he had been a reserve officer for the Los Angeles Police Department and had been terminated for cause from his position as a reserve police officer in La Mesa, a suburb of Los Angeles. One of the issues in La Mesa related to Vander Kamp lying to La Mesa officials about having the proper certification to operate a radar gun.
Despite the investigation, Vander Kamp defeated Bailey in the general election, receiving 60 percent of the vote. Vander Kamp took office on January 7, 2025.
Separately, Deschutes County District Attorney Steve Gunnels had received a complaint in late 2024 that information about Vander Kamp’s educational background found in the county’s official voter’s pamphlet conflicted with Vander Kamp’s testimony at earlier criminal trials. Gunnells opened an investigation, which included reviewing resumes Vander Kamp provided to various law-enforcement agencies and confirming his academic credentials with the listed institutions.
On April 7, 2025, Gunnels released a report on his findings and said that he had placed Vander Kamp on a so-called “Brady list” and would not call him as a witness in a criminal case. These lists, maintained by prosecutors, typically include officials whose credibility has come under review. Its name comes from the United States Supreme Court ruling in Brady v. Maryland, which requires the state to disclose material exculpatory evidence to the defense.
The report said that Vander Kamp had misrepresented his educational background in his resumes provided to the Oregon State Police (OSP), and that he had testified falsely at criminal trials or hearings about his educational background.
According to Gunnels’s investigation, Vander Kamp received an undergraduate degree from the University of Phoenix and a master’s degree in business administration from Trident University International. But in a resume Vander Kamp sent to the state police in 2013, he said he had an undergraduate degree from the University of Southern California and an MBA from the University of Arizona. In the resumes sent to OSP in 2015 and 2017, he did not list an MBA but said he had an undergraduate degree from the University of Arizona. Beginning in 2019, the report said, Vander Kamp filed accurate resumes with the state police.
Gunnels said in the report that his office found three instances where Vander Kamp, at the time a deputy sheriff, testified falsely under oath about his educational background. In a 2013 case, involving Jeffrey Sime, whom a jury convicted of refusing to take an Intoxilyzer test, Vander Kamp told the jurors about his degrees from the University of Arizona and USC. In two other cases, one from 2013 and one from 2015, Vander Kamp did not directly testify about his education, but a prosecutor introduced the resume into evidence, and he testified to its accuracy. In the 2013 case, a jury convicted Ryan Anthony Miller for careless driving. At Miller’s trial, Vander Kamp testified as an expert witness about assessing drug impairment through the use of physiological tests and mental challenges, telling the jury that it was his opinion that Miller was impaired at the time of his arrest. The defendant in the 2015 case was acquitted.
Gunnels noted in the report that his office might be investigating other instances when Vander Kamp testified about his education.
But he said: “Based on the totality of the circumstances, we have significant concerns about Sheriff Vander Kamp’s credibility and veracity. His past false testimony coupled with his fraudulent past CVs are so interwoven to such an extent that they demonstrate a continuing pattern of dishonesty.”
Gunnels told the Bend Bulletin: “As part of my obligations as Deschutes County District Attorney, the Sheriff has been placed on our Brady list. As a result, our office will not call him as a witness in any criminal case. We also have a duty to notify criminal defense attorneys of his status,” Gunnels said.
Beginning in April 2025 and into the end of June 2025, Gunnels moved to vacate the convictions and dismiss charges against five men whose cases were tainted by Vander Kamp’s false statements. In four of the cases, Vander Kamp testified at trial or at a pre-trial hearing. In the fifth case, Vander Kamp had listed false academic credentials on an application for a search warrant in a burglary case. The other four convictions involved traffic-related offenses and a wide range of other charges, including resisting arrest, unauthorized use of a vehicle, and refusal to submit to a breath test. Three of the defendants received active sentences; one was for 10 days in jail, and the other two were sentences of 22 months and 36 months in prison.
Vander Kamp resigned from office on June 23, 2025, just as his opponents launched a recall effort. The Deschutes County Board of Commissioners appointed Ty Rupert as interim sheriff through 2026.
On July 24, 2025, the board of Public Safety and Standings Training barred Vander Kamp for life from holding a law-enforcement certification in the state of Oregon.
Here are the defendants whose convictions were vacated based on Vander Kamp’s misconduct: Riley Billings, Pedro Cariero, Ryan Miller, Daniel Rodriguez, and Jeffrey Sime.
– Ken Otterbourg
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Posting Date: 11-15-2025
Last updated: 11-15-2025