A Multnomah County circuit judge dismissed all charges against Jayda Z. Wise on Wednesday, more than two weeks after she was arrested in connection with a downtown Portland armed robbery and shooting.
Wise, 20, was indicted July 2 on charges including robbery with a firearm, assault with a firearm and unlawful use of a weapon, but surveillance-camera footage later became available that indicated officers had arrested the wrong person.
The robbery case remains open, Portland police spokesperson Kevin Allen said. No other arrests have been made.
After almost 20 days in jail, Wise emerged from Multnomah County Detention Center Thursday morning “very traumatized,” said Grace Nickelson, a close friend of Wise.
“It was just a case of being around the wrong people at the wrong time,” Nickelson said of Wise’s arrest.
Officers arrested Wise — also known by the first name Damarion — just after 12:40 a.m. on June 22 near Southwest 19th Avenue and West Burnside Street after they’d found a man shot and two others also injured in the area, according to the police report.
The victims told police that a man had approached and told them to give him their watches and wallets. They refused.
Then a woman came around a corner and started firing a gun. Two men in the small group of friends handed over their wallets, according to the affidavit.
The woman with the gun hit one person on the head with her pistol and shot another in the leg. Soon after, she and the man ran away, according to court records.
A few blocks away from where the robbery and shooting happened, officers came upon Wise and arrested her.
Two of the three people who’d been robbed later identified Wise as the person who shot at them, according to court records.
But eyewitness identification can be unreliable, pointed out Clay Graham, Wise’s public defense lawyer.
The Innocence Project, a legal nonprofit that works to identify and free people who’ve been wrongfully convicted, reported eyewitness misidentification was involved in 69% of the more than 300 wrongful convictions between 1989 and 2020 that were later overturned due to new DNA evidence. Multiple studies point to memory and bias issues that can lead eyewitnesses to make incorrect identifications.
Believing this may have happened in this case, Graham obtained surveillance footage from a local business near where the robbery occurred. The video clearly indicated the woman wielding the gun was not Wise, Graham said.
“With that information, there was really no reasonable way to believe a jury could find Ms. Wise guilty,” he said.
Graham sent the video to prosecutors, and the indictment was dismissed the next day, he said.
The Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office declined to comment on the indictment, citing the ongoing investigation.
On the night of the arrest, Wise told law enforcement that a woman named “Jayanna” was the shooter and that officers had arrested the wrong person, according to the probable-cause affidavit in the case against her.
Nickelson said Wise told her she was hanging out with a group of people that night that started discussing robbing someone for drug money. After that, Wise split off from the group, Nickelson said.
Wise has not faced any previous charges, according to court records.
Nickelson said she’s thankful Wise is out of jail and that she’s trying to support her friend as she recuperates from the arrest and detention.
“Nobody deserves to go through that,” she said.
— Sujena Soumyanath is a reporter on The Oregonian/OregonLive’s public safety team. You can reach her at 503-221-4309 or ssoumyanath@oregonian.com .