A woman accused of assaulting a top Japanese diplomat in downtown Portland in 2023 was granted release Monday to live with her mother pending trial after her latest court-ordered visit to a federal medical center to restore her mental competency.
Though prosecutors had objected to the release, Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Ratcliffe noted the release plan includes a number of social services marshaled by the defense lawyer for Arissa Jean Minyonne-Robinson.
“We have concerns but it is a comprehensive plan and the government takes some solace in that,” Ratcliffe said in court.
Minyonne-Robinson’s mother agreed to serve as her daughter’s third-party guardian to ensure she follows release conditions while she awaits trial. A federal pretrial officer also said she interviewed Minyonne-Robinson earlier Monday with her lawyer and she answered all her questions.
A trial had been set for Jan. 7, but Assistant Federal Public Defender Robert Hamilton asked that it be briefly delayed.
Minyonne-Robinson, now 25, has pleaded not guilty to a single count of assault on a foreign official and internationally protected person in federal court in Portland.
On June 17, 2023, Yuzo Yoshioka was walking by when Minyonne-Robinson “sprang up” from a planter where she was sitting near Southwest Park Avenue and Oak Street and “rushed at him, shoving him backward with two hands,” according to Ratcliffe
Yoshioka landed in the street next to a parked car and struck his head on pavement, Ratcliffe wrote in a court filing.
Minyonne-Robinson “stood menacingly” over Yoshioka and then returned to her seat before casually walking off, according to Ratcliffe. She never said anything during the attack, he noted.
Yoshioka received six stitches to close a cut on the back of his head. He told police he had never seen Minyonne-Robinson before he was attacked, according to Ratcliffe’s court filing.
U.S. District Judge Michael H. Simon said if the case results in a plea or conviction, any sentencing decision he makes might be “best informed” by Minyonne-Robinson’s behavior while on release.
The judge last ordered the Federal Bureau of Prisons to send her to a federal medical center in November 2024 for mental health treatment.
Under law, Robinson can’t be at a federal medical center for longer than four months.
Before that, she was found unable to assist in her defense in October 2023 and spent at least four months at the Federal Medical Center-Carswell in Fort Worth, Texas, before returning to custody in Oregon.
Yoshioka had arrived in Portland in late March 2023 and served as consul general for the Consular Office of Japan in Portland. He no longer serves as consul general and returned to Japan this past March, according to the consular office.
State bias crime charges were dropped against Minyonne-Robinson once a federal indictment was issued.
In recent years, Minyonne-Robinson had reported suffering from anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder, according to court records.
Ratcliffe alleges Minyonne-Robinson was responsible for four unprovoked attacks on strangers from August 2021 to Yoshioka’s attack in June 2023.
He said she used two hands to shove a mother who was exiting a MAX train with her 1-year-old child in a stroller and then kicked the stroller in August 2021. She told officers when she was stopped that the woman and child “were in the way so they got decked,” according to Ratcliffe’s memo.
In August 2022, she is accused of sneaking up behind a 76-year-old man who was waiting for medication at a Walmart pharmacy and then striking him multiple times in the back of his head and putting him in a choke hold, Ratcliffe wrote. She was arrested in the parking lot and admitted to police that she punched the man “for no reason,” according to Ratcliffe.
Charges in the MAX and Walmart encounters were dismissed in January 2023 in Multnomah County Circuit Court after Minyonne-Robinson spent at least 89 days in custody, state records show.
In October 2022, she allegedly pushed a 53-year-old man exiting a bus at the Beaverton Transit Center in Hillsboro, causing him to fall to the ground, according to court records. Assault and harassment charges are pending against her in Washington County.
AloJapan.com