Ontario, Calif.--
Critics are complaining that the melt-down of the prosecution of the late U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens has led the Justice Department to be "gun-shy" in going after Members of Congress, resulting in a number of federal legislators--including U.S. Rep. Don Young (R.-Alaska)--getting off the hook. The Department of Justice has denied that federal prosecutors have lost any of their nerve in bringing charges against Members of Congress. You can read all about it here in the article by Charlie Savage in the New York Times.
Monday, December 20, 2010
Saturday, December 11, 2010
Fresh from Dodging an Electoral Bullet, Sen. Lisa Murkowski Again Seeks Explanation of How Bill Allen Escaped Sex Charges
Anchorage--
Rich Mauer of the Anchorage Daily News has a story out about Sen. Lisa Murkowski's renewal of her demand for a fuller explanation of why convicted and imprisoned briber Bill Allen has not been prosecuted for having sex with underage girls. The article also discusses why local police thought federal charges were more appropriate than charges under Alaska state law. You should read it.
Rich Mauer of the Anchorage Daily News has a story out about Sen. Lisa Murkowski's renewal of her demand for a fuller explanation of why convicted and imprisoned briber Bill Allen has not been prosecuted for having sex with underage girls. The article also discusses why local police thought federal charges were more appropriate than charges under Alaska state law. You should read it.
Friday, December 10, 2010
Waiting for Henry Schuelke and the Office of Professional Responsibility
Anchorage--
As we await the release of reports on prosecution failures in the government's case against Ted Stevens, you can look at two related items. The first is the report of USA Today yesterday detailing the Department of Justice's light-handed response to misconduct by federal prosecutors. The second is the pushback by Attorney General, covered here in a piece in the Website http://www.mainjustice.com/ (registration required).
As we await the release of reports on prosecution failures in the government's case against Ted Stevens, you can look at two related items. The first is the report of USA Today yesterday detailing the Department of Justice's light-handed response to misconduct by federal prosecutors. The second is the pushback by Attorney General, covered here in a piece in the Website http://www.mainjustice.com/ (registration required).
Friday, December 3, 2010
Don Young and Charlie Rangel
Anchorage--
U.S. Rep. Don Young was one of only two Republicans who voted against the censure of Rep. Charlie Rangel (D.-N.Y.), which passed 333-79. The other Republican was Peter King, like Rangel a veteran member of the House delegation from New York City’s metropolitan area.
You could think of three reasons for Young to vote “No” on the censure of Rangel, who faced allegations involving failures to report income and improper charitable fund-raising.
The first would be the one offered by Young himself: He has never voted to censure a fellow Member of the House, preferring to let the voters decide on the consequences of a Member’s ethical violations.
A second factor would be fellow feeling arising from all their years of service together. You might think that it would hard to find two guys more dissimilar than the moose-hunting former riverboat captain and the long-time clubhouse pol from Harlem, but the two have had decades to build bonds. Both Young and Rangel have been in the U.S. House more than 35 years, and Rangel is one of only eight Members of Congress who have served on Capitol Hill longer than Young.
A third reason would be a different kind of solidarity between the pair, one that Erika Bolstad highlighted in the Anchorage Daily News: Young knows what it’s like to be under ethical scrutiny. “The Congressman for all Alaska” was under federal criminal investigation for a number of years on multiple fronts, including his receipt of gifts and campaign contributions from VECO executives Bill Allen and Rick Smith--now in federal prison. The House and Senate also voted in 2008 to ask the Department of Justice to investigate how the language in the "Coconut Road" earmark changed after the legislation passed both houses. This earmark for a Florida interchange project appeared in a transportation bill championed by Young shortly after a real estate developer who would benefit from the earmark raised $40,000 in campaign contributions for the Congressman.
Young announced less than four months ago that the Department of Justice had told him that the federal government had ended the federal criminal probe of him. Young, like Rangel, was re-elected to another term in the House last month.
U.S. Rep. Don Young was one of only two Republicans who voted against the censure of Rep. Charlie Rangel (D.-N.Y.), which passed 333-79. The other Republican was Peter King, like Rangel a veteran member of the House delegation from New York City’s metropolitan area.
You could think of three reasons for Young to vote “No” on the censure of Rangel, who faced allegations involving failures to report income and improper charitable fund-raising.
The first would be the one offered by Young himself: He has never voted to censure a fellow Member of the House, preferring to let the voters decide on the consequences of a Member’s ethical violations.
A second factor would be fellow feeling arising from all their years of service together. You might think that it would hard to find two guys more dissimilar than the moose-hunting former riverboat captain and the long-time clubhouse pol from Harlem, but the two have had decades to build bonds. Both Young and Rangel have been in the U.S. House more than 35 years, and Rangel is one of only eight Members of Congress who have served on Capitol Hill longer than Young.
A third reason would be a different kind of solidarity between the pair, one that Erika Bolstad highlighted in the Anchorage Daily News: Young knows what it’s like to be under ethical scrutiny. “The Congressman for all Alaska” was under federal criminal investigation for a number of years on multiple fronts, including his receipt of gifts and campaign contributions from VECO executives Bill Allen and Rick Smith--now in federal prison. The House and Senate also voted in 2008 to ask the Department of Justice to investigate how the language in the "Coconut Road" earmark changed after the legislation passed both houses. This earmark for a Florida interchange project appeared in a transportation bill championed by Young shortly after a real estate developer who would benefit from the earmark raised $40,000 in campaign contributions for the Congressman.
Young announced less than four months ago that the Department of Justice had told him that the federal government had ended the federal criminal probe of him. Young, like Rangel, was re-elected to another term in the House last month.
Thursday, November 25, 2010
Another Reading Recommendation
Anchorage--
Happy Thanksgiving. And be thankful you aren't in the situation described well in an article in the Washington Post called "The Waiting."
The piece is about the experiences of the survivors and the rescuers in the aftermath of a plane crash last August in a remote part of southwest Alaska. That accident killed former U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens (R.-Alaska) and four others: Dana Tindall, of Anchorage, a telecommunications executive; Tindall's daughter, Corey, a high school student; Washington, D.C., lobbyist Bill Phillips, a former chief of staff for Stevens; and the pilot, Terry Smith, of Eagle River, a retired Alaska Airlines chief pilot.
The crash left four other people alive--former NASA Administrator and ex-Stevens staff member Sean O’Keefe; O’Keefe’s son Kevin, a student; Washington, D.C.-area lobbyist Jim Morhard; and Phillips’ son Willy, a student.
The four survivors were in desperate trouble, not knowing if help would arrive. Even after it did, it took agonizing hours to get the survivors off the mountainside and into hospitals. The story is scary and affecting.
Happy Thanksgiving. And be thankful you aren't in the situation described well in an article in the Washington Post called "The Waiting."
The piece is about the experiences of the survivors and the rescuers in the aftermath of a plane crash last August in a remote part of southwest Alaska. That accident killed former U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens (R.-Alaska) and four others: Dana Tindall, of Anchorage, a telecommunications executive; Tindall's daughter, Corey, a high school student; Washington, D.C., lobbyist Bill Phillips, a former chief of staff for Stevens; and the pilot, Terry Smith, of Eagle River, a retired Alaska Airlines chief pilot.
The crash left four other people alive--former NASA Administrator and ex-Stevens staff member Sean O’Keefe; O’Keefe’s son Kevin, a student; Washington, D.C.-area lobbyist Jim Morhard; and Phillips’ son Willy, a student.
The four survivors were in desperate trouble, not knowing if help would arrive. Even after it did, it took agonizing hours to get the survivors off the mountainside and into hospitals. The story is scary and affecting.
Monday, November 22, 2010
Former Don Young Aide Gets 12 Weekends in Prison for Role in Corruption
Anchorage--
Former aide to U.S. Rep. Don Young (R.-Alaska) Mark Zachares was sentenced to 12 weekends in prison for giving tips and potential lobbying clients to disgraced uber-lobbyist Jack Abramoff's operation while receiving cash, gifts, and the promise of a job.
Zachares got this sentence today after providing "substantial" and "complete" assistance to federal investigators probing two Members of the Congress the government did not name. The Washington Post reported that those two Members of Congress are "believed to be Young and then-Rep. Tom Feeney (R.-Fla.)." The prosecution told the court that Zachares was not to blame for the government's failure to charge either Member of Congress, as legal and other evidentiary issues allowed both of those lawmakers to get off the hook.
As the Anchorage Daily News pointed out, the sentence also requires Zachares to perform 200 hours of community service, pay a $4,000 fine, and serve four years on probation.
Clarification: When the title of my last post spoke of "the big screen," I didn't mean that I appeared in a movie shown in a theatre. It's just that TVs have gotten so large now that they dwarf my little computer....
Former aide to U.S. Rep. Don Young (R.-Alaska) Mark Zachares was sentenced to 12 weekends in prison for giving tips and potential lobbying clients to disgraced uber-lobbyist Jack Abramoff's operation while receiving cash, gifts, and the promise of a job.
Zachares got this sentence today after providing "substantial" and "complete" assistance to federal investigators probing two Members of the Congress the government did not name. The Washington Post reported that those two Members of Congress are "believed to be Young and then-Rep. Tom Feeney (R.-Fla.)." The prosecution told the court that Zachares was not to blame for the government's failure to charge either Member of Congress, as legal and other evidentiary issues allowed both of those lawmakers to get off the hook.
As the Anchorage Daily News pointed out, the sentence also requires Zachares to perform 200 hours of community service, pay a $4,000 fine, and serve four years on probation.
Clarification: When the title of my last post spoke of "the big screen," I didn't mean that I appeared in a movie shown in a theatre. It's just that TVs have gotten so large now that they dwarf my little computer....
If You Missed Me on the Big Screen Friday, Here's a Link
Anchorage--
At the request of Matt Felling of Anchorage's KTVA Channel 11, I did some live TV Friday. I learned some things about live TV:
1. Keep your answers short.
2. Follow the cues in your ear, both from the questioner and from the producer in the booth.
3. Avoid fillers. (And if you think I talk funny now, buddy, you should have heard before I had, um, 12 years of Toastmaster training.)
Plus one substantive point: The lead-in to my interview and the headline on the story on the Website both state that federal investigators were "found guilty of professional misconduct" in the Ted Stevens trial. Given that there have been no findings--just multiple leaks of findings--this is incorrect. A good headline would be "Reports Say Fed. Investigators Will Be Found to Have Committed Professional Misconduct in Ted Stevens Trial."
You can see me yourself at KTVA.
Friday, November 19, 2010
Mass Media Cliff: I'm Scheduled to Be Live on TV Tonight
Anchorage--
The program is the 6 p.m. news on KTVA Channel 11 in Anchorage, and the interviewer is anchor Matt Felling. The subject is what I usually cover on this blog.
The program is the 6 p.m. news on KTVA Channel 11 in Anchorage, and the interviewer is anchor Matt Felling. The subject is what I usually cover on this blog.
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Good Reading from Steve Aufrecht on "POLAR PEN" and the Resulting Probes of the Probers
Anchorage--
You ought to read Steve Aufrecht's post on questions raised by the federal investigation into Alaska public corruption and the satellite probes into the prosecutors and investigators that the original investigation spawned. A retired (he would say "emeritus") professor of public administration at University of Alaska Anchorage, Steve has a perspective that I don't have. Former State Rep.--and current federal prisoner--Tom Anderson (R.-Anchorage) was one of Steve's students, and Steve had embattled FBI Agent Mary Beth Kepner speak with one of his classes when she was on a roll instead of under the gun. You can find Steve's post at http://whatdoino-steve.blogspot.com/2010/11/observations-on-mary-beth-kepner-and.html on the Internet.
You ought to read Steve Aufrecht's post on questions raised by the federal investigation into Alaska public corruption and the satellite probes into the prosecutors and investigators that the original investigation spawned. A retired (he would say "emeritus") professor of public administration at University of Alaska Anchorage, Steve has a perspective that I don't have. Former State Rep.--and current federal prisoner--Tom Anderson (R.-Anchorage) was one of Steve's students, and Steve had embattled FBI Agent Mary Beth Kepner speak with one of his classes when she was on a roll instead of under the gun. You can find Steve's post at http://whatdoino-steve.blogspot.com/2010/11/observations-on-mary-beth-kepner-and.html on the Internet.
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Second Leak of Probes of Prosecutors Points Finger at Two Alaska-Based Lawyers and an FBI Agent
Anchorage—
The Associated Press has reported that “a lawyer familiar with the matter” has said that a draft U.S. Department of Justice report finds that two prosecutors from the Anchorage U.S. Attorney’s Office and an FBI agent committed professional misconduct regarding the 2008 trial of then-U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens.
The AP report says that the source identified Assistant U.S. Attorneys Joseph Bottini and James Goeke as well as FBI agent Mary Beth Kepner as three officials being accused of having engaged in misconduct.
“Other Justice Department prosecutors involved in the case, including William Welch, who led the office that prosecuted Stevens, were not found to have engaged in misconduct,” says the AP report.
The AP report generally tracks the National Public Radio report published Monday regarding a report of the Office of Professional Responsibility, the Justice Department’s internal watchdog unit that focuses on investigating alleged violations of ethical standards.
The AP report differs from the NPR report, however, in that the AP states that its source says that the court-appointed special counsel conducting a separate probe of the prosecutors in the Ted Stevens case for potential criminal violations “has not yet made a decision whether to recommend charging anyone in the probe and has not made a decision on whether to issue a report on his findings.”
By contrast, the NPR report stated that Henry Schuelke, the court-appointed special counsel, had decided not to recommend any criminal prosecution of any of the prosecutors and had also prepared a written report.
The Associated Press report is by Pete Yost, and is available at http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iop4haHB4AVecASqtsuPaylNXPAw?docId=fdc970f1a21e4397bf89adfe22053364 on the Internet.
Separately, Rich Mauer of the Anchorage Daily News has a nice story on the pre-sentencing pleadings filed by Mark Zachares, a former aide to U.S. Rep. Don Young, R.-Alaska. You can find that article at http://www.adn.com/2010/11/17/1559581/ex-young-aide-tipped-fbi-in-investigation.html on the Internet.
The Associated Press has reported that “a lawyer familiar with the matter” has said that a draft U.S. Department of Justice report finds that two prosecutors from the Anchorage U.S. Attorney’s Office and an FBI agent committed professional misconduct regarding the 2008 trial of then-U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens.
The AP report says that the source identified Assistant U.S. Attorneys Joseph Bottini and James Goeke as well as FBI agent Mary Beth Kepner as three officials being accused of having engaged in misconduct.
“Other Justice Department prosecutors involved in the case, including William Welch, who led the office that prosecuted Stevens, were not found to have engaged in misconduct,” says the AP report.
The AP report generally tracks the National Public Radio report published Monday regarding a report of the Office of Professional Responsibility, the Justice Department’s internal watchdog unit that focuses on investigating alleged violations of ethical standards.
The AP report differs from the NPR report, however, in that the AP states that its source says that the court-appointed special counsel conducting a separate probe of the prosecutors in the Ted Stevens case for potential criminal violations “has not yet made a decision whether to recommend charging anyone in the probe and has not made a decision on whether to issue a report on his findings.”
By contrast, the NPR report stated that Henry Schuelke, the court-appointed special counsel, had decided not to recommend any criminal prosecution of any of the prosecutors and had also prepared a written report.
The Associated Press report is by Pete Yost, and is available at http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iop4haHB4AVecASqtsuPaylNXPAw?docId=fdc970f1a21e4397bf89adfe22053364 on the Internet.
Separately, Rich Mauer of the Anchorage Daily News has a nice story on the pre-sentencing pleadings filed by Mark Zachares, a former aide to U.S. Rep. Don Young, R.-Alaska. You can find that article at http://www.adn.com/2010/11/17/1559581/ex-young-aide-tipped-fbi-in-investigation.html on the Internet.
Monday, November 15, 2010
Report: No Prosecution for the Prosecutors
Anchorage—
National Public Radio has reported that the prosecutors in the botched prosecution of Ted Stevens will not face criminal charges of contempt of court.
The news organization also known as NPR says that “two sources familiar with the case” have said that a report by a court-appointed special counsel will not recommend criminal charges for any of the government attorneys involved in the 2008 prosecution of the then-U.S. Senator.
A trial produced jury verdicts of guilty on all seven felony counts brought against Stevens, but the Department of Justice agreed in April of 2009 to the dismissal of the case and the setting aside of those verdicts in the wake of revelations of prosecutorial misconduct. U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan, who presided over the Stevens trial, took the highly unusual step of appointing Washington lawyer Henry Schuelke to investigate six Department of Justice attorneys for possible criminal charges of contempt of court. Those six attorneys included four from the Department’s elite Public Integrity Section—William Welch, Brenda Morris, Nicholas Marsh, and Edward Sullivan. "The Stevens Six" also included two lawyers on loan from the Anchorage U.S. Attorney’s Office, Joseph Bottini and James Goeke.
NPR also reported today that the Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility (“OPR”) has completed its own separate investigation into the prosecutors’ handling of the Ted Stevens case. OPR is the DoJ’s internal ethics watchdog, and the NPR report says that OPR has completed a report flowing from the investigation.
Based on Carrie Johnson’s article on the NPR website, various figures on the government’s trial team will fare differently in that OPR report on professional misconduct in the Stevens case.
NPR said that “the two sources” said that the OPR report did not make findings of misconduct against William Welch, who headed the Public Integrity Section during the trial, or Welch’s deputy Brenda Morris, who served as the lead prosecutor in court despite being added to the prosecution team only weeks before the trial.
NPR’s article says that Nicholas Marsh, one of the other two government lawyers who spoke before the jury, “was not the subject of specific findings in the report.” Marsh committed suicide September 26, about a month after Ted Stevens died in an airplane crash in southwest Alaska.
NPR’s report states “Alleged misconduct by two Alaska prosecutors, Joseph Bottini and James Goeke, is described in the report, the sources said, as is FBI agent Mary Beth Kepner, who was the subject of a complaint by another FBI agent who portrayed himself as a whistleblower.”
Along with Morris and Marsh, Bottini was the third member of the government’s trial team who spoke in front of the jury. Kepner was the FBI agent who apparently originated the federal government’s “POLAR PEN” probe into Alaska public corruption that produced the prosecutions against Ted Stevens and 11 others. Kepner served as the co-lead agent on “POLAR PEN” with Chad Joy, an FBI agent whose post-trial complaint led to the unraveling of the Stevens prosecution and the stalling of the whole “POLAR PEN” probe.
Johnson’s article says that another prosecutor, Edward Sullivan, “also emerged from the investigation without major trouble.” Edward Sullivan and James Goeke were mostly behind the scenes during the prosecution, and they apparently concentrated on responding to the flood of motions produced by Ted Stevens’ aggressive defense team at the law firm of Williams & Connolly.
On a separate front, Welch and Morris last week filed formal notices of appeal of Judge Sullivan’s ruling that they committed civil contempt of court in post-trial proceedings regarding Joy’s complaint. Judge Sullivan imposed no punishment based on that finding of civil contempt.
Carrie Johnson’s article on the NPR website can be found at http://www.npr.org/2010/11/15/131332081/stevens-prosecutors-won-t-face-criminal-charges on the Internet.
National Public Radio has reported that the prosecutors in the botched prosecution of Ted Stevens will not face criminal charges of contempt of court.
The news organization also known as NPR says that “two sources familiar with the case” have said that a report by a court-appointed special counsel will not recommend criminal charges for any of the government attorneys involved in the 2008 prosecution of the then-U.S. Senator.
A trial produced jury verdicts of guilty on all seven felony counts brought against Stevens, but the Department of Justice agreed in April of 2009 to the dismissal of the case and the setting aside of those verdicts in the wake of revelations of prosecutorial misconduct. U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan, who presided over the Stevens trial, took the highly unusual step of appointing Washington lawyer Henry Schuelke to investigate six Department of Justice attorneys for possible criminal charges of contempt of court. Those six attorneys included four from the Department’s elite Public Integrity Section—William Welch, Brenda Morris, Nicholas Marsh, and Edward Sullivan. "The Stevens Six" also included two lawyers on loan from the Anchorage U.S. Attorney’s Office, Joseph Bottini and James Goeke.
NPR also reported today that the Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility (“OPR”) has completed its own separate investigation into the prosecutors’ handling of the Ted Stevens case. OPR is the DoJ’s internal ethics watchdog, and the NPR report says that OPR has completed a report flowing from the investigation.
Based on Carrie Johnson’s article on the NPR website, various figures on the government’s trial team will fare differently in that OPR report on professional misconduct in the Stevens case.
NPR said that “the two sources” said that the OPR report did not make findings of misconduct against William Welch, who headed the Public Integrity Section during the trial, or Welch’s deputy Brenda Morris, who served as the lead prosecutor in court despite being added to the prosecution team only weeks before the trial.
NPR’s article says that Nicholas Marsh, one of the other two government lawyers who spoke before the jury, “was not the subject of specific findings in the report.” Marsh committed suicide September 26, about a month after Ted Stevens died in an airplane crash in southwest Alaska.
NPR’s report states “Alleged misconduct by two Alaska prosecutors, Joseph Bottini and James Goeke, is described in the report, the sources said, as is FBI agent Mary Beth Kepner, who was the subject of a complaint by another FBI agent who portrayed himself as a whistleblower.”
Along with Morris and Marsh, Bottini was the third member of the government’s trial team who spoke in front of the jury. Kepner was the FBI agent who apparently originated the federal government’s “POLAR PEN” probe into Alaska public corruption that produced the prosecutions against Ted Stevens and 11 others. Kepner served as the co-lead agent on “POLAR PEN” with Chad Joy, an FBI agent whose post-trial complaint led to the unraveling of the Stevens prosecution and the stalling of the whole “POLAR PEN” probe.
Johnson’s article says that another prosecutor, Edward Sullivan, “also emerged from the investigation without major trouble.” Edward Sullivan and James Goeke were mostly behind the scenes during the prosecution, and they apparently concentrated on responding to the flood of motions produced by Ted Stevens’ aggressive defense team at the law firm of Williams & Connolly.
On a separate front, Welch and Morris last week filed formal notices of appeal of Judge Sullivan’s ruling that they committed civil contempt of court in post-trial proceedings regarding Joy’s complaint. Judge Sullivan imposed no punishment based on that finding of civil contempt.
Carrie Johnson’s article on the NPR website can be found at http://www.npr.org/2010/11/15/131332081/stevens-prosecutors-won-t-face-criminal-charges on the Internet.
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
A Correction and a List of Questions for the Feds
Anchorage--
Although I said yesterday that former super-lobbyist and convicted felon Jack Abramoff is in federal prison, it is more accurate to say that he is in federal custody. He was released from prison to a halfway house in Maryland in June, and while living at the halfway house he has reportedly been working to promote a kosher pizzeria in Baltimore. Abramoff is set to be released from the halfway house next month.
In other transition news, for the next few days I will be in Valdez and Ellamar, a remote community on the eastern side of Prince William Sound. Questions to ponder while I'm gone include:
1. Given their setbacks with judicial rulings and with witnesses, will the feds really go ahead with the scheduled trial of former State Rep. Bruce Weyhrauch (R.-Juneau) next year?
2. When will the court-appointed special counsel who has been conducting a criminal investigation of some of the prosecutors involved in the federal probe into Alaska public corruption issue the report detailing the findings of that investigation?
3. What announcement--if any--will the Department of Justice make about the end of that federal probe into Alaska public corruption?
Standard disclosure: I have known Bruce Weyhrauch since we both worked as staff for the Alaska Legislature in the early 1980s. We socialized a number of times when I lived in Juneau in the 1980s and early 1990s, but he has never discussed this case with me.
Although I said yesterday that former super-lobbyist and convicted felon Jack Abramoff is in federal prison, it is more accurate to say that he is in federal custody. He was released from prison to a halfway house in Maryland in June, and while living at the halfway house he has reportedly been working to promote a kosher pizzeria in Baltimore. Abramoff is set to be released from the halfway house next month.
In other transition news, for the next few days I will be in Valdez and Ellamar, a remote community on the eastern side of Prince William Sound. Questions to ponder while I'm gone include:
1. Given their setbacks with judicial rulings and with witnesses, will the feds really go ahead with the scheduled trial of former State Rep. Bruce Weyhrauch (R.-Juneau) next year?
2. When will the court-appointed special counsel who has been conducting a criminal investigation of some of the prosecutors involved in the federal probe into Alaska public corruption issue the report detailing the findings of that investigation?
3. What announcement--if any--will the Department of Justice make about the end of that federal probe into Alaska public corruption?
Standard disclosure: I have known Bruce Weyhrauch since we both worked as staff for the Alaska Legislature in the early 1980s. We socialized a number of times when I lived in Juneau in the 1980s and early 1990s, but he has never discussed this case with me.
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Traffic Cop in the New Snow: Anchorage Daily News Has News on Don Young's Former Aide Requesting Probation
Anchorage--
I invite your attention to Rich Mauer's article in the Anchorage Daily News detailing the efforts of former high-level U.S. House Transportation Committee aide Mark Zachares to ask for probation following his guilty plea. Zachares was a key assistant to U.S. Rep. Don Young (R.-Alaska), and Young gave him the job after then-uber-lobbyist Jack Abramoff helped Zachares. Abramoff is now a convicted felon and federal prisoner. As Mauer's story lays out, Zachares gave Abramoff's operation inside information on Congressional work, and "Team Abramoff" gave Zachares "$30,000 in tickets to sporting events, a luxury golf trip to Scotland and $10,000 in cash." You can find the article at http://www.adn.com/2010/11/08/1543750/former-young-aide-seeks-probation.html on the Internet.
I invite your attention to Rich Mauer's article in the Anchorage Daily News detailing the efforts of former high-level U.S. House Transportation Committee aide Mark Zachares to ask for probation following his guilty plea. Zachares was a key assistant to U.S. Rep. Don Young (R.-Alaska), and Young gave him the job after then-uber-lobbyist Jack Abramoff helped Zachares. Abramoff is now a convicted felon and federal prisoner. As Mauer's story lays out, Zachares gave Abramoff's operation inside information on Congressional work, and "Team Abramoff" gave Zachares "$30,000 in tickets to sporting events, a luxury golf trip to Scotland and $10,000 in cash." You can find the article at http://www.adn.com/2010/11/08/1543750/former-young-aide-seeks-probation.html on the Internet.
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Bruce Weyhrauch's Trial Reset Again, This Time for Four Years after His Indictment
Anchorage—
The federal courts have set out another schedule for the long-delayed trial of former State Rep. Bruce Weyhrauch (R.-Juneau), with the new trial date set for May 9, 2011.
The re-setting occurred after a hearing this morning, which was covered by Rich Mauer of the Anchorage Daily News. You can read his report at http://www.adn.com/2010/11/03/1534689/judge-sets-start-date-in-weyhrauch.html on the Internet.
U.S. District Judge John Sedwick set out the reasons for why a case already almost three and a half years old will be set for trial more than six months in the future. In an order issued today, the judge observed that “This case is part of a series of prosecutions which, as it has turned out, involved a variety of failures by the prosecutors to comply with their discovery obligations.” The government has a new set of lawyers, and they need more time to learn the case. The defense attorneys have indicated that they will file a whole bunch of pre-trial motions that might fall into one of a dozen categories, some of which will focus on government misconduct that the defense will argue should result in the case being thrown out.
Mauer’s article says that the defense announced today that it will try to paint a full portrait of that government misconduct by getting testimony from Mary Beth Kepner, who once served as co-lead agent for the FBI on the seven-year-old federal probe into Alaska public corruption. That testimony will apparently have to be compelled, as Weyhrauch’s defense team said back in July that a lawyer for Kepner had indicated that she would exercise her Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination if called to testify.
The prosecution’s case against Weyhrauch has more problems than Kepner. The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling last summer on the honest-services fraud statute and the general decline in perceptions of Weyhrauch's alleged briber Bill Allen are among the other barriers to obtaining a conviction of the ex-lawmaker.
As I have repeatedly disclosed, I have known Bruce Weyhrauch since we both worked as staff for the Alaska Legislature in the early 1980s. We socialized a number of times when I lived in Juneau in the 1980s and early 1990s, but he has never discussed this case with me.
The federal courts have set out another schedule for the long-delayed trial of former State Rep. Bruce Weyhrauch (R.-Juneau), with the new trial date set for May 9, 2011.
The re-setting occurred after a hearing this morning, which was covered by Rich Mauer of the Anchorage Daily News. You can read his report at http://www.adn.com/2010/11/03/1534689/judge-sets-start-date-in-weyhrauch.html on the Internet.
U.S. District Judge John Sedwick set out the reasons for why a case already almost three and a half years old will be set for trial more than six months in the future. In an order issued today, the judge observed that “This case is part of a series of prosecutions which, as it has turned out, involved a variety of failures by the prosecutors to comply with their discovery obligations.” The government has a new set of lawyers, and they need more time to learn the case. The defense attorneys have indicated that they will file a whole bunch of pre-trial motions that might fall into one of a dozen categories, some of which will focus on government misconduct that the defense will argue should result in the case being thrown out.
Mauer’s article says that the defense announced today that it will try to paint a full portrait of that government misconduct by getting testimony from Mary Beth Kepner, who once served as co-lead agent for the FBI on the seven-year-old federal probe into Alaska public corruption. That testimony will apparently have to be compelled, as Weyhrauch’s defense team said back in July that a lawyer for Kepner had indicated that she would exercise her Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination if called to testify.
The prosecution’s case against Weyhrauch has more problems than Kepner. The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling last summer on the honest-services fraud statute and the general decline in perceptions of Weyhrauch's alleged briber Bill Allen are among the other barriers to obtaining a conviction of the ex-lawmaker.
As I have repeatedly disclosed, I have known Bruce Weyhrauch since we both worked as staff for the Alaska Legislature in the early 1980s. We socialized a number of times when I lived in Juneau in the 1980s and early 1990s, but he has never discussed this case with me.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Mountain and Icefield Added to List of Things Named After Ted Stevens
Anchorage—
President Obama has signed into law the bill that puts Ted Stevens' name on Alaska’s highest unnamed peak as well as on a portion of an icefield.
The bill, sponsored by Alaska’s Congressional delegation, names the 13,895-foot peak in the Alaska Range in Denali National Park and Preserve “Mount Stevens.” The bill also gives the name “Ted Stevens Icefield” to a portion of the northern Chugach National Forest that includes seven glaciers. At 8,340 square miles, that newly named icefield is more than five times the size of Rhode Island.
These honors are among the latest given to Stevens, who loomed so large in the Great Land that the state legislature recognized him as “Alaskan of the Century” in 2000 and newspapers referred to federal funding as “Stevens money” without using quotation marks. As detailed by the Anchorage Daily News in 2008, physical entities in the 49th State bearing the name of the longest-serving Republican U.S. Senator ever include:
• Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport, which is not only the state’s largest but the world’s third busiest for cargo as measured by tonnage moved;
• Ted Stevens Marine Research Institute, an office and laboratory building in Juneau that is the state’s largest fisheries research facility;
• Ted and Catherine Stevens Center for Science and Technology Education, part of the Challenger Learning Center of Alaska in Kenai; and
• The Stevens Family Chalet at the Hilltop Ski Area in Anchorage.
One final note: Ted Stevens had an extensive and far-reaching impact, but--contrary to a column published in 2008 by The Economist--there does not appear to be a federal penitentiary named after him. The legendary reach of the long-time Chairman and Ranking Minority Member of the Senate Appropriations Committee must have temporarily blinded the distinguished British-based magazine. Not everything you read in the media is accurate, whether it’s in traditional print or on the Internet.
President Obama has signed into law the bill that puts Ted Stevens' name on Alaska’s highest unnamed peak as well as on a portion of an icefield.
The bill, sponsored by Alaska’s Congressional delegation, names the 13,895-foot peak in the Alaska Range in Denali National Park and Preserve “Mount Stevens.” The bill also gives the name “Ted Stevens Icefield” to a portion of the northern Chugach National Forest that includes seven glaciers. At 8,340 square miles, that newly named icefield is more than five times the size of Rhode Island.
These honors are among the latest given to Stevens, who loomed so large in the Great Land that the state legislature recognized him as “Alaskan of the Century” in 2000 and newspapers referred to federal funding as “Stevens money” without using quotation marks. As detailed by the Anchorage Daily News in 2008, physical entities in the 49th State bearing the name of the longest-serving Republican U.S. Senator ever include:
• Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport, which is not only the state’s largest but the world’s third busiest for cargo as measured by tonnage moved;
• Ted Stevens Marine Research Institute, an office and laboratory building in Juneau that is the state’s largest fisheries research facility;
• Ted and Catherine Stevens Center for Science and Technology Education, part of the Challenger Learning Center of Alaska in Kenai; and
• The Stevens Family Chalet at the Hilltop Ski Area in Anchorage.
One final note: Ted Stevens had an extensive and far-reaching impact, but--contrary to a column published in 2008 by The Economist--there does not appear to be a federal penitentiary named after him. The legendary reach of the long-time Chairman and Ranking Minority Member of the Senate Appropriations Committee must have temporarily blinded the distinguished British-based magazine. Not everything you read in the media is accurate, whether it’s in traditional print or on the Internet.
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Judge Announces that Prosecutors Will Not Be Punished for Contempt of Court Based on Withholding Documents After the Ted Stevens Trial
Anchorage--
The trial judge in the Ted Stevens case has announced that the three prosecutors he had held in contempt of court last year for not producing documents as he had directed in post-trial proceedings will not face punishment for that finding of contempt.
U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan had made the contempt finding against the three Department of Justice attorneys during tumultuous hearings after the trial that ultimately led to the collapse of the prosecution and the setting aside of the jury’s guilty verdicts against the defendant.
The judge had made the finding against Brenda Morris, William Welch, and Patty Merkamp Stemler in February of 2009. Morris had been the government’s lead trial attorney as well as the DoJ’s Public Integrity Section’s principal deputy; Welch was then the head of the section; and Stemler—who made the request that triggered the ruling today—was an appellate attorney who had worked on the post-trial proceedings. (The judge had originally added a fourth attorney to that contempt order, but let that junior lawyer off the hook the next day.)
Today's 26-page order refused to vacate the contempt finding issued on February 13, 2009, but lifted the finding as of the time later that same day when the Department of Justice provided to the defense the documents in question. The judge also announced today that he would impose no punishment for the contempt.
Officially, Judge Sullivan issued this order now because Stemler had sought relief from the finding of contempt and because the Justice Department had almost immediately purged the contempt by turning over the documents that the judge had ordered to be turned over. (This purging can happen in civil contempt cases, where the purpose of putting someone in contempt is to coerce that someone to do something; don’t count on the same result in a case of criminal contempt of court.)
Unofficially, two reasons may also explain the timing and substance of this order. Judge Sullivan may feel that the three prosecutors have been punished enough by the stigma flowing from the contempt finding. Additionally, the judge knows that two of the three prosecutors involved in decisions about the trial—Morris and Welch—are two of the six prosecutors under criminal investigation by a special counsel the judge appointed when the Ted Stevens prosecution ended. That criminal investigation focuses on the actions and omissions of the prosecutors in providing evidence to the defense before and during the trial. Judge Sullivan may believe that those six prosecutors under scrutiny will soon face what at minimum seems likely to be a highly critical report from the special counsel. (One of the prosecutors being probed in the Ted Stevens case—Nicholas Marsh—committed suicide last month.)
More generally, the series of events here fits a pattern seen in the trial itself: The judge would explode in court and threaten heavy sanctions when he saw what he considered misconduct before sleeping on it and then going with a softer response.
The trial judge in the Ted Stevens case has announced that the three prosecutors he had held in contempt of court last year for not producing documents as he had directed in post-trial proceedings will not face punishment for that finding of contempt.
U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan had made the contempt finding against the three Department of Justice attorneys during tumultuous hearings after the trial that ultimately led to the collapse of the prosecution and the setting aside of the jury’s guilty verdicts against the defendant.
The judge had made the finding against Brenda Morris, William Welch, and Patty Merkamp Stemler in February of 2009. Morris had been the government’s lead trial attorney as well as the DoJ’s Public Integrity Section’s principal deputy; Welch was then the head of the section; and Stemler—who made the request that triggered the ruling today—was an appellate attorney who had worked on the post-trial proceedings. (The judge had originally added a fourth attorney to that contempt order, but let that junior lawyer off the hook the next day.)
Today's 26-page order refused to vacate the contempt finding issued on February 13, 2009, but lifted the finding as of the time later that same day when the Department of Justice provided to the defense the documents in question. The judge also announced today that he would impose no punishment for the contempt.
Officially, Judge Sullivan issued this order now because Stemler had sought relief from the finding of contempt and because the Justice Department had almost immediately purged the contempt by turning over the documents that the judge had ordered to be turned over. (This purging can happen in civil contempt cases, where the purpose of putting someone in contempt is to coerce that someone to do something; don’t count on the same result in a case of criminal contempt of court.)
Unofficially, two reasons may also explain the timing and substance of this order. Judge Sullivan may feel that the three prosecutors have been punished enough by the stigma flowing from the contempt finding. Additionally, the judge knows that two of the three prosecutors involved in decisions about the trial—Morris and Welch—are two of the six prosecutors under criminal investigation by a special counsel the judge appointed when the Ted Stevens prosecution ended. That criminal investigation focuses on the actions and omissions of the prosecutors in providing evidence to the defense before and during the trial. Judge Sullivan may believe that those six prosecutors under scrutiny will soon face what at minimum seems likely to be a highly critical report from the special counsel. (One of the prosecutors being probed in the Ted Stevens case—Nicholas Marsh—committed suicide last month.)
More generally, the series of events here fits a pattern seen in the trial itself: The judge would explode in court and threaten heavy sanctions when he saw what he considered misconduct before sleeping on it and then going with a softer response.
Friday, October 8, 2010
Jim Clark Walks, But Has to Keep Cooperating with the Feds
Anchorage—
Citing the U.S. Supreme Court’s narrowing of the application of a critical statute, the federal government has agreed to dismiss the case against Jim Clark, even though the ex-Chief of Staff to former Gov. Frank Murkowski had pleaded guilty back in March of 2008.
The problem for the feds is that the law that Clark pleaded guilty to violating was the honest services fraud statute, which the Supreme Court performed radical surgery on last June. The part that Clark admitted that he ran afoul of while Chief of Staff had been cut off, so as the law stands now the indictment did not charge him with an actual crime.
Although a federal judge must approve this agreement to throw out the charge against Clark, it seems highly likely that this will be a mere formality.
The feds made a big point in their filing today that they are holding Clark to his plea bargain, which requires him to cooperate with the government in the investigation and prosecution of others in return for the government not charging Clark with other crimes.
The only “other” out there now would appear to be ex-State Rep. Bruce Weyhrauch (R.-Juneau), who is charged with bribery, extortion, and conspiracy. Weyhrauch’s case is back in District Court in Anchorage after having traveled up to the Supreme Court (where he was one of the winning defendants in the decision last June cutting back the scope of the honest services fraud statute) and down again.
Weyhrauch’s case is also the only one left unadjudicated in the seven-year-old federal investigation into Alaska public corruption that the feds call “POLAR PEN.” Of the 12 people charged in the probe, only three are in prison now: former VECO CEO Bill Allen; former VECO VP Rick Smith; and former State Rep. Tom Anderson (R.-Anchorage).
Disclosure: Bruce Weyhrauch is the defendant in the cases arising from the federal probe into Alaska public corruption that I know the best personally. I worked with Bruce Weyhrauch when we both served on the staff of the Alaska Legislature in the early 1980s and have socialized with him some since then. I have seen him less since I moved away from Juneau in the early 1990s, and he has never discussed this case with me.
Citing the U.S. Supreme Court’s narrowing of the application of a critical statute, the federal government has agreed to dismiss the case against Jim Clark, even though the ex-Chief of Staff to former Gov. Frank Murkowski had pleaded guilty back in March of 2008.
The problem for the feds is that the law that Clark pleaded guilty to violating was the honest services fraud statute, which the Supreme Court performed radical surgery on last June. The part that Clark admitted that he ran afoul of while Chief of Staff had been cut off, so as the law stands now the indictment did not charge him with an actual crime.
Although a federal judge must approve this agreement to throw out the charge against Clark, it seems highly likely that this will be a mere formality.
The feds made a big point in their filing today that they are holding Clark to his plea bargain, which requires him to cooperate with the government in the investigation and prosecution of others in return for the government not charging Clark with other crimes.
The only “other” out there now would appear to be ex-State Rep. Bruce Weyhrauch (R.-Juneau), who is charged with bribery, extortion, and conspiracy. Weyhrauch’s case is back in District Court in Anchorage after having traveled up to the Supreme Court (where he was one of the winning defendants in the decision last June cutting back the scope of the honest services fraud statute) and down again.
Weyhrauch’s case is also the only one left unadjudicated in the seven-year-old federal investigation into Alaska public corruption that the feds call “POLAR PEN.” Of the 12 people charged in the probe, only three are in prison now: former VECO CEO Bill Allen; former VECO VP Rick Smith; and former State Rep. Tom Anderson (R.-Anchorage).
Disclosure: Bruce Weyhrauch is the defendant in the cases arising from the federal probe into Alaska public corruption that I know the best personally. I worked with Bruce Weyhrauch when we both served on the staff of the Alaska Legislature in the early 1980s and have socialized with him some since then. I have seen him less since I moved away from Juneau in the early 1990s, and he has never discussed this case with me.
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Notes on the Life, Death, and Mental State of Nicholas Marsh
Anchorage—
Nicholas “Nick” Marsh died by his own hand September 26 while under investigation for his conduct as a prosecutor in the Ted Stevens case. The suicide of a government lawyer who played a critical role in the federal government’s “POLAR PEN” probe into Alaska public corruption has triggered a number of pieces in the media talking about his life and speculating—explicitly or implicitly—about why he killed himself.
When I saw the headline that a prosecutor under investigation in the Ted Stevens case had killed himself, I thought of Marsh even before I could see a name.
There has been no report of a suicide note, and it seems difficult in most cases to know why somebody ends their own life. We do know more than we did about him before his death, however, and it is worth it to put the media coverage of his suicide together with what I observed in weeks of watching him at the trials of Ted Stevens and Pete Kott. What follows is mostly from what appears to have been Marsh's own perspective on his life and death.
Let’s start with what he would have preferred to focus on, his accomplishments.
Early Life: Philosophy and Lacrosse
According to his Washington Post obituary, the man all his friends called Nick was born and went to high school in Kentucky. There seem to have been some high expectations in his family: Marsh’s stepfather was on the cover of Time magazine after performing the first successful transplant of an artificial heart into a human patient.
Marsh left the Louisville area to study at some of the world’s best schools: philosophy and history at Williams College; philosophy again at Oxford University; law and literature at Duke University.
This description of his academic career fits in well with what a number of observers saw in court looking at the slight, boyish-looking, and wonky-sounding attorney. Blogger Steve Aufrecht wrote that the dark-haired prosecutor reminded him of Peter Parker as played by Tobey Maguire in the Spider-Man movies.
Standing outside that image, however, are the facts that Marsh lettered in lacrosse at both Williams and Oxford.
Known for centuries among the Native Americans who created it as “the Little Brother of War,” lacrosse has grown away from the all-out violence that used to characterize it. The sport still emphasizes aggression, however, and can easily be marketed as “football on Viagra.” Lacrosse also values speed and agility, but you have to bang bodies in the men’s game, a sport that Marsh played well at a high level. Studying philosophy and literature is good training for writing appellate briefs, but playing college lacrosse gives you the physical taste for competition that could prepare you better for going toe-to-toe in court with high-powered lawyers.
Nick Marsh repeatedly impressed his superiors on his way up. A Duke law professor specializing in criminal law told the Anchorage Daily News that her former student was a lawyer "who really had a lot to offer the world….He was someone who wanted to make a positive contribution; that's one of the reasons he wanted to work for the government."
Fairbanks Law Clerk
After law school, Marsh did a one-year judicial clerkship for Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Andrew Kleinfeld. Those chambers were in what Marsh later jokingly called “the balmy metropolis of Fairbanks, Alaska.” The young law clerk worked hard—one of his fellow clerks remembers late nights in the office and pre-dawn food runs to a Burger King while wearing business suits—and the boss clearly liked him. Judge Kleinfeld told the National Law Journal that Marsh “was a person of the highest integrity, a very decent, intelligent, hard-working guy."
Beginnings of Career in Prosecution
Judge Kleinfeld recommended Marsh for the position in the Department of Justice’s Public Integrity Section that the lawyer took four years after his clerkship ended, according to the National Law Journal. The judge’s kind words were almost certainly helpful in the young lawyer obtaining some other good jobs in between. Marsh worked at two old-line law firms in New York City before taking a job as a prosecutor with the U.S. Department of Justice in 2003.
The National Law Journal has reported that Marsh worked briefly at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington, D.C. before starting at the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section, an elite squad of 25-30 attorneys who fight public corruption around the country.
The new hire impressed his bosses again by handling three appellate cases his first year, according to the National Law Journal. He also worked in 2004 on the Mississippi-based prosecutions flowing out of attempts to defraud a settlement involving the drug fen-phen, and he was on the government’s courtroom team at a 2005 trial in New Hampshire over a Republican campaign official’s involvement in jamming the phones on a Democratic Party get-out-the-vote drive.
Point Man in POLAR PEN
A recent court filing has stated that the “POLAR PEN” probe into Alaska public corruption started the summer of 2003. According to a Legal Times article in 2009, Marsh began traveling in 2004 to the Great Land to work on that investigation.
At some point between 2003 and 2006, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Anchorage was recused—lawyer lingo for stepping aside because of a potential or actual conflict of interest—from any decision-making in the POLAR PEN probe, and the Washington-based Public Integrity Section took over. Marsh became immersed in the public corruption investigation on the Last Frontier as the senior prosecutor on the ground.
"Nick spent a lot of his life and energy working on the Alaska cases," a Public Integrity Section supervisor told the National Law Journal. "I can only say he sacrificed a whole lot of himself working on those cases, logging tens of thousands of miles traveling to and from Alaska."
Marsh was involved in the dozen prosecutions arising from the POLAR PEN probe, and gained a reputation among defense attorneys as a tough-minded zealot. Marsh served as essentially the lead government attorney in two trials producing convictions of ex-State Reps. Tom Anderson (R.-Anchorage) and Pete Kott (R.-Eagle River).
Marsh appeared set up to be the lead prosecutor in the country’s biggest public corruption case in years, as he had played a lead role in the grand jury investigation of U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens. In the words of the Website TalkingPointsMemo.com, the prosecution of Ted Stevens would be the “crown jewel” of POLAR PEN, as it would be the first trial of a sitting U.S. Senator in a quarter century and a trial of the man who was one of the longest-serving U.S. Senators ever.
Shortly—perhaps only days—before the indictment came down in late July of 2008, however, higher-ups at the Justice Department inserted another lawyer over Marsh on the Ted Stevens case. The decision to put the sassy Brenda Morris in at the top at the last minute bothered the decidedly unflashy Marsh, the Legal Times reported in 2009.
Although not the lead government lawyer, Marsh was one of three prosecutors appearing before the jury at the highly publicized trial. He argued some of the most important legal motions, and did a particularly good job in cross-examining critical defense witness Bob Persons.
Marsh also took heat during the trial from the judge, however, for some of the problems that arose from the government’s failure to turn over--or "discover"--to the defense all the evidence the law required. Following some contentious hearings and some additional provision of discovery during the trial, the judge allowed the trial to proceed.
Marsh and his team of four fellow prosecutors at trial (three--Marsh, Brenda Morris, and Joseph Bottini--at the counsel table, with two others mostly working on legal motions back at the office) worked around-the-clock for weeks. The prosecution was up against what the Washington Lawyer reported was 11 lawyers (six at the counsel table, with five others mostly back at the office) fielded by Williams & Connolly, the pre-eminent law firm in the country when it comes to white-collar criminal defense. The defense cost $2 million or more—Stevens’ lead attorney Brendan Sullivan typically billed at $1,000 per hour—and the defendant made a filing to the U.S. Senate after the trial disclosing that he owed Williams & Connolly between $1 million and $5 million.
At the end of the five-week trial, the jury returned guilty verdicts against Ted Stevens on all seven felony counts charging failure to report gifts and services—essentially lying to conceal free benefits on forms he submitted to Congress over a half-dozen years. The jury had given Marsh and his colleagues an unqualified victory.
In December of 2008—six weeks after the jury came back with guilty verdicts—Marsh gave an advertised talk at Duke, speaking to the law students at his alma mater on the topic of “Prosecuting Public Corruption Cases: A Prosecutor's Perspective.”
The Ted Stevens Case Flames Out and Burns the Prosecutors
Four months after his talk, his best-known triumph had turned to ashes. The FBI agent who served as co-lead agent on the POLAR PEN probe filed a complaint that alleged misconduct by government officials, including Marsh himself. The trial judge became angrier and angrier with prosecutors in post-trial proceedings, and the Justice Department put a new team on the case after the judge took the extraordinary step of holding some government attorneys in contempt of court. That new team of prosecutors found additional evidence—including some critical items—that the government had not disclosed to the defense before or during the trial.
In April of 2009, Attorney General Eric Holder decided to join the defense request to have the guilty verdicts set aside and the case dismissed. U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan dismissed the case with prejudice, stating "In nearly 25 years on the bench, I've never seen anything approaching the mishandling and misconduct that I've seen in this case." In another extraordinary step, Judge Sullivan ordered that a court-appointed special counsel mount a criminal investigation of Marsh and five other prosecutors to see if they committed contempt of court. This probe joined an internal investigation of the prosecutors' conduct run by the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR).
The collapse of the Ted Stevens case produced an orgy of anonymous finger-pointing in the press, with some of the blame in the media being dumped on Marsh personally. (New York Times, April 6, 2009: “One of the trial lawyers implicated in several instances of alleged misconduct and concealing documents was Nicholas Marsh….”)
Things went further downhill two months after the case collapsed. In June of 2009, his superiors told the man who had just six months before given a presentation about the prosecution of public corruption to the students at his law school that he was being transferred out of the elite Public Integrity Section. Along with the more junior Public Integrity Section attorney who had gone repeatedly to Alaska, Marsh was sent to one of the Justice Department’s relatively low-profile units, the Office of International Affairs.
Even though the Website MainJustice.com called Marsh’s new workplace a “backwater,” the actual responsibilities sound more than OK. Marsh got a caseload of 200 cases in Europe and a job that had him doing a lot of international travel; his work took him to Hungary and Moldova, the latter trip only two weeks before his death. The government sustained a defeat in his most publicized case at his new assignment—the attempt to extradite fugitive filmmaker Roman Polanski in a decades-old sexual abuse case—but his bosses didn’t seem to hold that setback against him personally.
What might seem a pleasant assignment to the great majority of people in the world could not make Nick Marsh feel good, however. He felt like he had a bull’s eye on his back and was being set up to be the fall guy for the prosecution’s problems in the Ted Stevens case and other Alaska cases he had handled.
The day Marsh was transferred to the Office of International Affairs, the Justice Department announced that a review of the convictions of two former Alaska state legislators showed some evidence that should been provided to the defense. These discovery violations led the new team of government prosecutors to take the highly unusual step of asking the court to release ex-State Reps. Pete Kott and Vic Kohring from prison while the court sorted out what to do with their cases.
The parade of bad news for Marsh continued after his transfer. A defense filing in the Kott case was particularly damaging to the lawyer, as it revealed an e-mail message from Marsh to his superiors that arguably suggested insufficient attention to the prosecutor's discovery obligations during witness coaching sessions with key government witness Bill Allen.
Friends told reporters at TalkingPointsMemo.com, the Wall Street Journal, and the National Law Journal that Marsh was distressed with the length of the investigations of the prosecutors’ conduct, which by the time of his suicide had run on almost 18 months after the dismissal of the Ted Stevens case. Friends also said that Marsh was bothered by a sense that he was being scapegoated while higher-ups who shared whatever culpability he had in the discovery problems were getting off easily. When Marsh was transferred out of the Public Integrity Section, the Washington Post reported that some in the Justice Department—presumably including Marsh himself—were afraid that “lower-level attorneys were being sacrificed by new political appointees at the department who are now applying more rigorous standards on evidence-sharing practices than were in place before.”
One unnamed friend told TalkingPointsMemo.com "When the s___ hit the fan -- regardless of what happened or who was at fault -- in a high profile case like this, the mistakes go higher up the chain."
While Marsh and another junior attorney under scrutiny were sent to the less prestigious Office of International Affairs, friends said that Marsh was bothered by what he saw as inconsistent treatment of two other lawyers under investigation. Two of Marsh’s former superiors at the Public Integrity Section who were subjects of the probes—including Brenda Morris, who did double duty as the lead counsel in the Ted Stevens case—got to continue to work on high-profile prosecutions. Marsh also had to know that Morris—by all accounts the life of many parties—had been a friend of Attorney General Eric Holder.
Although friends said the lack of resolution in the investigations weighed on Marsh, he also seemed to fear the results when they finally ended. Potential outcomes of the probes included the imposition of professional discipline or even being criminally charged himself. Even if he escaped those fates, National Public Radio reported attorneys involved in the investigations seemed to believe that that “the best case scenario” for Marsh and the other lawyers under investigation was a “very blistering report” that would come out later this year, with the special court-appointed counsel’s report to be released perhaps in a few weeks.
Marsh had very good representation in these investigations: His attorney had helped then-Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove escape prosecution in the Valerie Plame affair. That excellent lawyer—Robert Luskin—told the Wall Street Journal after the suicide that "We are so close to the finish line. I have every reason to think he would have been exonerated."
The problem was that a victory for Marsh’s lawyer—avoidance of criminal prosecution for his client—would not return to Marsh his previously good reputation and excellent career prospects.
“Nicholas Marsh was gripped with a growing sense of dread,” the National Law Journal said after his death. “Close friends said the young lawyer was uncertain whether he would salvage his career at the U.S. Justice Department or whether private law firms would hire him.”
Marsh didn’t seem to see less lofty or less traditional career goals as an option, as that wasn’t his frame of reference. Judging by those quoted in the articles about him, his friends tended to be either Justice Department prosecutors or partners at large law firms.
His friends stood up for him in the press after his death: Joshua Berman called the accusations against Marsh “unfounded,” and Joshua Waxman said that “He had a long career of working on public corruption cases and great success in prosecuting.”
Marsh’s lawyer Robert Luskin told the National Law Journal that "The whole process imposed an unbelievable burden on Nick, a burden that in the end he couldn't bear."
Marsh hanged himself last week in the basement of the home in Washington he shared with his wife, whom he married shortly before the Ted Stevens trial started. He was 37.
(This post relied on a number of media reports, particularly those of Carrie Johnson of National Public Radio (and formerly of the Washington Post), Mike Scarcella of the National Law Journal, Ryan J. Reilly of TalkingPointsMemo.com, Evan Perez of the Wall Street Journal, Joe Palazzolo of Dow Jones (and formerly of Legal Times and MainJustice.com), and Erika Bolstad of McClatchy Newspapers, owner of the Anchorage Daily News.)
Nicholas “Nick” Marsh died by his own hand September 26 while under investigation for his conduct as a prosecutor in the Ted Stevens case. The suicide of a government lawyer who played a critical role in the federal government’s “POLAR PEN” probe into Alaska public corruption has triggered a number of pieces in the media talking about his life and speculating—explicitly or implicitly—about why he killed himself.
When I saw the headline that a prosecutor under investigation in the Ted Stevens case had killed himself, I thought of Marsh even before I could see a name.
There has been no report of a suicide note, and it seems difficult in most cases to know why somebody ends their own life. We do know more than we did about him before his death, however, and it is worth it to put the media coverage of his suicide together with what I observed in weeks of watching him at the trials of Ted Stevens and Pete Kott. What follows is mostly from what appears to have been Marsh's own perspective on his life and death.
Let’s start with what he would have preferred to focus on, his accomplishments.
Early Life: Philosophy and Lacrosse
According to his Washington Post obituary, the man all his friends called Nick was born and went to high school in Kentucky. There seem to have been some high expectations in his family: Marsh’s stepfather was on the cover of Time magazine after performing the first successful transplant of an artificial heart into a human patient.
Marsh left the Louisville area to study at some of the world’s best schools: philosophy and history at Williams College; philosophy again at Oxford University; law and literature at Duke University.
This description of his academic career fits in well with what a number of observers saw in court looking at the slight, boyish-looking, and wonky-sounding attorney. Blogger Steve Aufrecht wrote that the dark-haired prosecutor reminded him of Peter Parker as played by Tobey Maguire in the Spider-Man movies.
Standing outside that image, however, are the facts that Marsh lettered in lacrosse at both Williams and Oxford.
Known for centuries among the Native Americans who created it as “the Little Brother of War,” lacrosse has grown away from the all-out violence that used to characterize it. The sport still emphasizes aggression, however, and can easily be marketed as “football on Viagra.” Lacrosse also values speed and agility, but you have to bang bodies in the men’s game, a sport that Marsh played well at a high level. Studying philosophy and literature is good training for writing appellate briefs, but playing college lacrosse gives you the physical taste for competition that could prepare you better for going toe-to-toe in court with high-powered lawyers.
Nick Marsh repeatedly impressed his superiors on his way up. A Duke law professor specializing in criminal law told the Anchorage Daily News that her former student was a lawyer "who really had a lot to offer the world….He was someone who wanted to make a positive contribution; that's one of the reasons he wanted to work for the government."
Fairbanks Law Clerk
After law school, Marsh did a one-year judicial clerkship for Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Andrew Kleinfeld. Those chambers were in what Marsh later jokingly called “the balmy metropolis of Fairbanks, Alaska.” The young law clerk worked hard—one of his fellow clerks remembers late nights in the office and pre-dawn food runs to a Burger King while wearing business suits—and the boss clearly liked him. Judge Kleinfeld told the National Law Journal that Marsh “was a person of the highest integrity, a very decent, intelligent, hard-working guy."
Beginnings of Career in Prosecution
Judge Kleinfeld recommended Marsh for the position in the Department of Justice’s Public Integrity Section that the lawyer took four years after his clerkship ended, according to the National Law Journal. The judge’s kind words were almost certainly helpful in the young lawyer obtaining some other good jobs in between. Marsh worked at two old-line law firms in New York City before taking a job as a prosecutor with the U.S. Department of Justice in 2003.
The National Law Journal has reported that Marsh worked briefly at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington, D.C. before starting at the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section, an elite squad of 25-30 attorneys who fight public corruption around the country.
The new hire impressed his bosses again by handling three appellate cases his first year, according to the National Law Journal. He also worked in 2004 on the Mississippi-based prosecutions flowing out of attempts to defraud a settlement involving the drug fen-phen, and he was on the government’s courtroom team at a 2005 trial in New Hampshire over a Republican campaign official’s involvement in jamming the phones on a Democratic Party get-out-the-vote drive.
Point Man in POLAR PEN
A recent court filing has stated that the “POLAR PEN” probe into Alaska public corruption started the summer of 2003. According to a Legal Times article in 2009, Marsh began traveling in 2004 to the Great Land to work on that investigation.
At some point between 2003 and 2006, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Anchorage was recused—lawyer lingo for stepping aside because of a potential or actual conflict of interest—from any decision-making in the POLAR PEN probe, and the Washington-based Public Integrity Section took over. Marsh became immersed in the public corruption investigation on the Last Frontier as the senior prosecutor on the ground.
"Nick spent a lot of his life and energy working on the Alaska cases," a Public Integrity Section supervisor told the National Law Journal. "I can only say he sacrificed a whole lot of himself working on those cases, logging tens of thousands of miles traveling to and from Alaska."
Marsh was involved in the dozen prosecutions arising from the POLAR PEN probe, and gained a reputation among defense attorneys as a tough-minded zealot. Marsh served as essentially the lead government attorney in two trials producing convictions of ex-State Reps. Tom Anderson (R.-Anchorage) and Pete Kott (R.-Eagle River).
Marsh appeared set up to be the lead prosecutor in the country’s biggest public corruption case in years, as he had played a lead role in the grand jury investigation of U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens. In the words of the Website TalkingPointsMemo.com, the prosecution of Ted Stevens would be the “crown jewel” of POLAR PEN, as it would be the first trial of a sitting U.S. Senator in a quarter century and a trial of the man who was one of the longest-serving U.S. Senators ever.
Shortly—perhaps only days—before the indictment came down in late July of 2008, however, higher-ups at the Justice Department inserted another lawyer over Marsh on the Ted Stevens case. The decision to put the sassy Brenda Morris in at the top at the last minute bothered the decidedly unflashy Marsh, the Legal Times reported in 2009.
Although not the lead government lawyer, Marsh was one of three prosecutors appearing before the jury at the highly publicized trial. He argued some of the most important legal motions, and did a particularly good job in cross-examining critical defense witness Bob Persons.
Marsh also took heat during the trial from the judge, however, for some of the problems that arose from the government’s failure to turn over--or "discover"--to the defense all the evidence the law required. Following some contentious hearings and some additional provision of discovery during the trial, the judge allowed the trial to proceed.
Marsh and his team of four fellow prosecutors at trial (three--Marsh, Brenda Morris, and Joseph Bottini--at the counsel table, with two others mostly working on legal motions back at the office) worked around-the-clock for weeks. The prosecution was up against what the Washington Lawyer reported was 11 lawyers (six at the counsel table, with five others mostly back at the office) fielded by Williams & Connolly, the pre-eminent law firm in the country when it comes to white-collar criminal defense. The defense cost $2 million or more—Stevens’ lead attorney Brendan Sullivan typically billed at $1,000 per hour—and the defendant made a filing to the U.S. Senate after the trial disclosing that he owed Williams & Connolly between $1 million and $5 million.
At the end of the five-week trial, the jury returned guilty verdicts against Ted Stevens on all seven felony counts charging failure to report gifts and services—essentially lying to conceal free benefits on forms he submitted to Congress over a half-dozen years. The jury had given Marsh and his colleagues an unqualified victory.
In December of 2008—six weeks after the jury came back with guilty verdicts—Marsh gave an advertised talk at Duke, speaking to the law students at his alma mater on the topic of “Prosecuting Public Corruption Cases: A Prosecutor's Perspective.”
The Ted Stevens Case Flames Out and Burns the Prosecutors
Four months after his talk, his best-known triumph had turned to ashes. The FBI agent who served as co-lead agent on the POLAR PEN probe filed a complaint that alleged misconduct by government officials, including Marsh himself. The trial judge became angrier and angrier with prosecutors in post-trial proceedings, and the Justice Department put a new team on the case after the judge took the extraordinary step of holding some government attorneys in contempt of court. That new team of prosecutors found additional evidence—including some critical items—that the government had not disclosed to the defense before or during the trial.
In April of 2009, Attorney General Eric Holder decided to join the defense request to have the guilty verdicts set aside and the case dismissed. U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan dismissed the case with prejudice, stating "In nearly 25 years on the bench, I've never seen anything approaching the mishandling and misconduct that I've seen in this case." In another extraordinary step, Judge Sullivan ordered that a court-appointed special counsel mount a criminal investigation of Marsh and five other prosecutors to see if they committed contempt of court. This probe joined an internal investigation of the prosecutors' conduct run by the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR).
The collapse of the Ted Stevens case produced an orgy of anonymous finger-pointing in the press, with some of the blame in the media being dumped on Marsh personally. (New York Times, April 6, 2009: “One of the trial lawyers implicated in several instances of alleged misconduct and concealing documents was Nicholas Marsh….”)
Things went further downhill two months after the case collapsed. In June of 2009, his superiors told the man who had just six months before given a presentation about the prosecution of public corruption to the students at his law school that he was being transferred out of the elite Public Integrity Section. Along with the more junior Public Integrity Section attorney who had gone repeatedly to Alaska, Marsh was sent to one of the Justice Department’s relatively low-profile units, the Office of International Affairs.
Even though the Website MainJustice.com called Marsh’s new workplace a “backwater,” the actual responsibilities sound more than OK. Marsh got a caseload of 200 cases in Europe and a job that had him doing a lot of international travel; his work took him to Hungary and Moldova, the latter trip only two weeks before his death. The government sustained a defeat in his most publicized case at his new assignment—the attempt to extradite fugitive filmmaker Roman Polanski in a decades-old sexual abuse case—but his bosses didn’t seem to hold that setback against him personally.
What might seem a pleasant assignment to the great majority of people in the world could not make Nick Marsh feel good, however. He felt like he had a bull’s eye on his back and was being set up to be the fall guy for the prosecution’s problems in the Ted Stevens case and other Alaska cases he had handled.
The day Marsh was transferred to the Office of International Affairs, the Justice Department announced that a review of the convictions of two former Alaska state legislators showed some evidence that should been provided to the defense. These discovery violations led the new team of government prosecutors to take the highly unusual step of asking the court to release ex-State Reps. Pete Kott and Vic Kohring from prison while the court sorted out what to do with their cases.
The parade of bad news for Marsh continued after his transfer. A defense filing in the Kott case was particularly damaging to the lawyer, as it revealed an e-mail message from Marsh to his superiors that arguably suggested insufficient attention to the prosecutor's discovery obligations during witness coaching sessions with key government witness Bill Allen.
Friends told reporters at TalkingPointsMemo.com, the Wall Street Journal, and the National Law Journal that Marsh was distressed with the length of the investigations of the prosecutors’ conduct, which by the time of his suicide had run on almost 18 months after the dismissal of the Ted Stevens case. Friends also said that Marsh was bothered by a sense that he was being scapegoated while higher-ups who shared whatever culpability he had in the discovery problems were getting off easily. When Marsh was transferred out of the Public Integrity Section, the Washington Post reported that some in the Justice Department—presumably including Marsh himself—were afraid that “lower-level attorneys were being sacrificed by new political appointees at the department who are now applying more rigorous standards on evidence-sharing practices than were in place before.”
One unnamed friend told TalkingPointsMemo.com "When the s___ hit the fan -- regardless of what happened or who was at fault -- in a high profile case like this, the mistakes go higher up the chain."
While Marsh and another junior attorney under scrutiny were sent to the less prestigious Office of International Affairs, friends said that Marsh was bothered by what he saw as inconsistent treatment of two other lawyers under investigation. Two of Marsh’s former superiors at the Public Integrity Section who were subjects of the probes—including Brenda Morris, who did double duty as the lead counsel in the Ted Stevens case—got to continue to work on high-profile prosecutions. Marsh also had to know that Morris—by all accounts the life of many parties—had been a friend of Attorney General Eric Holder.
Although friends said the lack of resolution in the investigations weighed on Marsh, he also seemed to fear the results when they finally ended. Potential outcomes of the probes included the imposition of professional discipline or even being criminally charged himself. Even if he escaped those fates, National Public Radio reported attorneys involved in the investigations seemed to believe that that “the best case scenario” for Marsh and the other lawyers under investigation was a “very blistering report” that would come out later this year, with the special court-appointed counsel’s report to be released perhaps in a few weeks.
Marsh had very good representation in these investigations: His attorney had helped then-Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove escape prosecution in the Valerie Plame affair. That excellent lawyer—Robert Luskin—told the Wall Street Journal after the suicide that "We are so close to the finish line. I have every reason to think he would have been exonerated."
The problem was that a victory for Marsh’s lawyer—avoidance of criminal prosecution for his client—would not return to Marsh his previously good reputation and excellent career prospects.
“Nicholas Marsh was gripped with a growing sense of dread,” the National Law Journal said after his death. “Close friends said the young lawyer was uncertain whether he would salvage his career at the U.S. Justice Department or whether private law firms would hire him.”
Marsh didn’t seem to see less lofty or less traditional career goals as an option, as that wasn’t his frame of reference. Judging by those quoted in the articles about him, his friends tended to be either Justice Department prosecutors or partners at large law firms.
His friends stood up for him in the press after his death: Joshua Berman called the accusations against Marsh “unfounded,” and Joshua Waxman said that “He had a long career of working on public corruption cases and great success in prosecuting.”
Marsh’s lawyer Robert Luskin told the National Law Journal that "The whole process imposed an unbelievable burden on Nick, a burden that in the end he couldn't bear."
Marsh hanged himself last week in the basement of the home in Washington he shared with his wife, whom he married shortly before the Ted Stevens trial started. He was 37.
(This post relied on a number of media reports, particularly those of Carrie Johnson of National Public Radio (and formerly of the Washington Post), Mike Scarcella of the National Law Journal, Ryan J. Reilly of TalkingPointsMemo.com, Evan Perez of the Wall Street Journal, Joe Palazzolo of Dow Jones (and formerly of Legal Times and MainJustice.com), and Erika Bolstad of McClatchy Newspapers, owner of the Anchorage Daily News.)
Clarification on January 27, 2011--My original description of the total number of Stevens prosecutors as Marsh and five others included in its total William Welch, who was heavily involved in the prosecution but did not work full-time on the case during the trial. Welch is one of the six prosecutors identified in the original charge given to the special counsel selected by U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan along with the five who did work full-time on the case during the trial: Brenda Morris, Joseph Bottini, James Goeke, and Edward Sullivan.
Monday, September 27, 2010
Bruce Weyhrauch Gets Expected Victory on Evidentiary Ruling from the Ninth Circuit
Anchorage--
Jill Burke of the Alaska Dispatch has a nice article on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling on evidence in the case of former State Rep. Bruce Weyhrauch (R.-Juneau). It's weighted towards the defense view of things, but the federal government did not respond to her request for comment. The U.S. Supreme Court decisions earlier this year substantially reducing the scope of the federal honest services fraud statute made this ruling a certainty, but it's still a victory for the defense. You can find the article at
http://www.alaskadispatch.com/dispatches/politics/6968-bruce-weyhrauch-wins-evidence-battle?start=1 on the Internet.
Jill Burke of the Alaska Dispatch has a nice article on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling on evidence in the case of former State Rep. Bruce Weyhrauch (R.-Juneau). It's weighted towards the defense view of things, but the federal government did not respond to her request for comment. The U.S. Supreme Court decisions earlier this year substantially reducing the scope of the federal honest services fraud statute made this ruling a certainty, but it's still a victory for the defense. You can find the article at
http://www.alaskadispatch.com/dispatches/politics/6968-bruce-weyhrauch-wins-evidence-battle?start=1 on the Internet.
Former Federal Prosecutor Nicholas Marsh Commits Suicide
Anchorage--
Former federal prosecutor Nicholas Marsh killed himself over the weekend. As an attorney for the Department of Justice's Public Integrity Section, Marsh was the senior lawyer on the ground on the federal government's POLAR PEN probe into Alaska public corruption during the period that it was most active. As such, the Washington, D.C.-based attorney played key roles in prosecuting a number of defendants, including then-U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens.
Disclosure of prosecutorial misconduct after the jury returned guilty verdicts in the Stevens trial led to the dismissal of that case. Those relevations of failures to turn evidence over to the defense triggered investigations of Marsh and other government attorneys involved. The judge in the Stevens trial took the highly unusual step of ordering a probe by outside counsel to determine if the discovery violations in that prosecution should lead to criminal charges.
The Department of Justice has also been conducting an internal investigation into the same issues that has led to the government's acknowledgment of prosecutorial misconduct in two other trials, that of former State Reps. Pete Kott (R.-Eagle River) and Vic Kohring (R.-Wasilla). In another highly unusual series of events, Kott and Kohring have been released from prison while courts sort out whether the discovery violations in those cases should lead to their convictions being overturned.
National Public Radio had this story first, and I thank the eagle-eyed Mark Regan for bringing it to my attention. NPR reports that the court-appointed special counsel's report is expected "in a few weeks," and also states that Marsh's lawyer had said that he had not expected that Marsh would be charged.
This is obviously a horrible event. Speculation about Marsh's motivations seems likely to be rampant and excessive: The NPR story includes the sentence "But apparently the strain of the investigation was just too much." It seems better to end on the note sounded by Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer: "Our deepest sympathies go out to Nick's family and friends on this sad day. The Department of Justice is a community, and today our community is mourning the loss of this dedicated young attorney."
Former federal prosecutor Nicholas Marsh killed himself over the weekend. As an attorney for the Department of Justice's Public Integrity Section, Marsh was the senior lawyer on the ground on the federal government's POLAR PEN probe into Alaska public corruption during the period that it was most active. As such, the Washington, D.C.-based attorney played key roles in prosecuting a number of defendants, including then-U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens.
Disclosure of prosecutorial misconduct after the jury returned guilty verdicts in the Stevens trial led to the dismissal of that case. Those relevations of failures to turn evidence over to the defense triggered investigations of Marsh and other government attorneys involved. The judge in the Stevens trial took the highly unusual step of ordering a probe by outside counsel to determine if the discovery violations in that prosecution should lead to criminal charges.
The Department of Justice has also been conducting an internal investigation into the same issues that has led to the government's acknowledgment of prosecutorial misconduct in two other trials, that of former State Reps. Pete Kott (R.-Eagle River) and Vic Kohring (R.-Wasilla). In another highly unusual series of events, Kott and Kohring have been released from prison while courts sort out whether the discovery violations in those cases should lead to their convictions being overturned.
National Public Radio had this story first, and I thank the eagle-eyed Mark Regan for bringing it to my attention. NPR reports that the court-appointed special counsel's report is expected "in a few weeks," and also states that Marsh's lawyer had said that he had not expected that Marsh would be charged.
This is obviously a horrible event. Speculation about Marsh's motivations seems likely to be rampant and excessive: The NPR story includes the sentence "But apparently the strain of the investigation was just too much." It seems better to end on the note sounded by Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer: "Our deepest sympathies go out to Nick's family and friends on this sad day. The Department of Justice is a community, and today our community is mourning the loss of this dedicated young attorney."
Monday, September 20, 2010
Court Puts Jim Clark's Sentencing on Indefinite Hold
Anchorage--
U.S. District Judge John W. Sedwick issued an order today that is short enough to quote in full:
JWS ORDER as to James Clark; In light of the motion to dismiss at docket [37], as well as the fact that the Weyhrauch trial will not be concluded in the near future, the imposition of sentence set for October 15, 2010, is hereby VACATED. Sentencing will be reset only if, after considering the United States' response the motion to dismiss, the court denies that motion. cc: USM, USPO (RMC, COURT STAFF) (Entered: 09/20/2010)
Clark is the former Chief of Staff to ex-Gov. Frank Murkowski. The reference to "Weyhrauch" is to former State Rep. Bruce Weyhrauch (R.-Juneau), whose case is the only one arising out of the federal government's POLAR PEN investigation into Alaska public corruption that remains unadjudicated.
U.S. District Judge John W. Sedwick issued an order today that is short enough to quote in full:
JWS ORDER as to James Clark; In light of the motion to dismiss at docket [37], as well as the fact that the Weyhrauch trial will not be concluded in the near future, the imposition of sentence set for October 15, 2010, is hereby VACATED. Sentencing will be reset only if, after considering the United States' response the motion to dismiss, the court denies that motion. cc: USM, USPO (RMC, COURT STAFF) (Entered: 09/20/2010)
Clark is the former Chief of Staff to ex-Gov. Frank Murkowski. The reference to "Weyhrauch" is to former State Rep. Bruce Weyhrauch (R.-Juneau), whose case is the only one arising out of the federal government's POLAR PEN investigation into Alaska public corruption that remains unadjudicated.
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Jim Clark Asks to Have His Charge Dismissed
Anchorage--
Jim Clark's attorney has asked the court to throw out the case against him on the grounds that the Supreme Court's decision earlier this year cutting back on the scope of the honest-services fraud statute means that the former Chief of Staff to Alaska Gov. Frank Murkowski no longer faces a valid criminal charge. As Mark Regan and I have discussed, the delays the prosecution has allowed before Clark's sentencing has given Clark the time to make this request. Clark's sentencing is currently set for October 10, and this motion all but guarantees that the sentencing will be again delayed. Clark's request also raises the chances that the sentencing will never occur.
I promise there's more to come. My blogging has been slow lately in part because of the "Cost-Effective Justice" forum set for Saturday, and when that's done I'll be able to focus on producing more posts for you.
Jim Clark's attorney has asked the court to throw out the case against him on the grounds that the Supreme Court's decision earlier this year cutting back on the scope of the honest-services fraud statute means that the former Chief of Staff to Alaska Gov. Frank Murkowski no longer faces a valid criminal charge. As Mark Regan and I have discussed, the delays the prosecution has allowed before Clark's sentencing has given Clark the time to make this request. Clark's sentencing is currently set for October 10, and this motion all but guarantees that the sentencing will be again delayed. Clark's request also raises the chances that the sentencing will never occur.
I promise there's more to come. My blogging has been slow lately in part because of the "Cost-Effective Justice" forum set for Saturday, and when that's done I'll be able to focus on producing more posts for you.
Saturday, September 11, 2010
"Cost-Effective Justice" Forum Coming Up September 18 in Anchorage
Anchorage—
As I head off to another trip to Prince William Sound, I can offer two things:
1. Assurances that I’m still working to produce more on the Ted Stevens funeral as well as the past and future of Bill Allen’s relationship with the criminal justice system; and
2. An ad for something else I’m working on as a volunteer. Alaska Common Ground and Partners for Progress are holding a forum on “Cost-Effective Justice: New Directions for Prisoner Rehabilitation and Re-entry.” This event is on Saturday, September 18, at the Loussac Library’s Assembly Chambers in Anchorage from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. The forum features nationally known experts, including State Rep. Jerry Madden, the Texas legislator who spearheaded efforts to reform corrections in the Lone Star State.
This event is free and open to the public. It costs $45,000 for the State of Alaska to keep someone in prison for a year, and this forum will explore whether there are cheaper and more effective alternatives that could apply to most prisoners. I hope to see you there.
As I head off to another trip to Prince William Sound, I can offer two things:
1. Assurances that I’m still working to produce more on the Ted Stevens funeral as well as the past and future of Bill Allen’s relationship with the criminal justice system; and
2. An ad for something else I’m working on as a volunteer. Alaska Common Ground and Partners for Progress are holding a forum on “Cost-Effective Justice: New Directions for Prisoner Rehabilitation and Re-entry.” This event is on Saturday, September 18, at the Loussac Library’s Assembly Chambers in Anchorage from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. The forum features nationally known experts, including State Rep. Jerry Madden, the Texas legislator who spearheaded efforts to reform corrections in the Lone Star State.
This event is free and open to the public. It costs $45,000 for the State of Alaska to keep someone in prison for a year, and this forum will explore whether there are cheaper and more effective alternatives that could apply to most prisoners. I hope to see you there.
Monday, August 23, 2010
Previews of Coming Attractions: Ted Stevens' Funeral and Bill Allen's Pass
Anchorage--
I'm still pondering two big events from last week, and I will write more on them when I get back from three days in Prince William Sound. In the meantime, I will say that Ted Stevens' funeral was a spectacle and a tribute, while the announcement of the federal government's decision not to prosecute Bill Allen for sexual offenses with underaged girls is a travesty. If the feds were going to give the former VECO chieftain a pass on multiple acts of sexual abuse of minors--charges that the authorities appeared to have a good case on--in order to get his cooperation in prosecuting serious acts of public corruption, the Department of Justice should have cowboyed up, acknowledged it, and argued why that was the right thing to do. More to come.
I'm still pondering two big events from last week, and I will write more on them when I get back from three days in Prince William Sound. In the meantime, I will say that Ted Stevens' funeral was a spectacle and a tribute, while the announcement of the federal government's decision not to prosecute Bill Allen for sexual offenses with underaged girls is a travesty. If the feds were going to give the former VECO chieftain a pass on multiple acts of sexual abuse of minors--charges that the authorities appeared to have a good case on--in order to get his cooperation in prosecuting serious acts of public corruption, the Department of Justice should have cowboyed up, acknowledged it, and argued why that was the right thing to do. More to come.
Friday, August 20, 2010
Feds Announce that Bill Allen Will Not Be Charged for Sexual Offenses with Minors
Anchorage--
Rich Mauer of the Anchorage Daily News has a long story on the Department of Justice's announcement that it is dropping without charges the long investigation of Bill Allen's alleged sexual involvement with a number of girls then underage. You should read the whole thing at http://www.adn.com/2010/08/20/1418211/feds-wont-prosecute-allen-on-sex.html on the Internet.
Rich Mauer of the Anchorage Daily News has a long story on the Department of Justice's announcement that it is dropping without charges the long investigation of Bill Allen's alleged sexual involvement with a number of girls then underage. You should read the whole thing at http://www.adn.com/2010/08/20/1418211/feds-wont-prosecute-allen-on-sex.html on the Internet.
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Why Ted Stevens' Death Has Hit Alaska So Hard
Anchorage--
An outpouring of grief has washed over Alaskans regarding the tragic passing of Ted Stevens. The former U.S. Senator died last week in a plane crash near Dillingham. In addition to Stevens, that accident took the lives of Dana Tindall, of Anchorage, a telecommunications executive; Tindall's daughter, Corey, a high school student; Washington, D.C., lobbyist Bill Phillips, a former chief of staff for Stevens; and the pilot, Terry Smith, of Eagle River, a retired Alaska Airlines chief pilot. The survivors were former NASA Administrator and ex-Stevens staff member Sean O’Keefe; O’Keefe’s son Kevin, a student; Washington, D.C.-area lobbyist Jim Morhard; and Phillips’ son Willy, a student.
Signs of mourning for Ted Stevens are all over. Large streetside signs reading “GOD BLESS TED STEVENS” and “HE LOVED ALASKA AND WE WILL MISS HIM SEN TED STEVENS” appear four blocks apart in Anchorage. A funeral home runs a radio spot in heavy rotation urging people to sign the official guestbook at its parlor and receive a program about the former Senator’s life.
There are no fewer than four events marking the end of his life in Anchorage this week. There was a Catholic mass Monday; a viewing of his casket today at his old home church, All Saints Episcopal; a procession tonight following that viewing from All Saints to Anchorage Baptist Temple; and finally the official memorial service at that megachurch on Wednesday at 2 p.m. The Anchorage Baptist Temple can hold more than 4,500 people, and Vice President Joe Biden is expected to be among those in the pews.
Love and Admiration
There appear to be several strands in this mourning for “Uncle Ted,” who served as U.S. Senator for Alaska for 40 years. For his family and friends, there is the obvious love for a man who was dedicated to those close to him. For many others who crossed his path over the years, there is affection and admiration for his many fine qualities—intelligence, hard work, devotion to Alaska and the interests of Alaskans as he saw them. Alaskans also treasure the bluntness that carried its own kind of charm: the skillfully used temper, the Incredible Hulk and Tasmanian devil ties, the tough-guy statements like “Senator, that’s not a threat, it’s a promise.” If the legendary Governor Jay Hammond personified Alaskans’ image of themselves as independent pioneers who run trap lines and build their own cabins, Ted Stevens personified the Last Frontier’s scrappy fighter side.
Grief Over the Loss of a Glorious Past
The mourning over the man who worked in Alaska public life for well over five decades also seems to reflect a nostalgia for an earlier time—the era in the 1950s and early 1960s when statehood was won and people worked to build the new state. Back then, Alaskans seemed more united, the politics seemed purer, and the Great Land seemed greater. Ted Stevens was the last prominent link to that period, and some of the grief seems to come from that longing for a time that now seems more glorious and less complicated. (Mingled with that nostalgia may be a strong sense of regret among Alaska voters. Stevens only lost re-election after a jury returned guilty verdicts against him on seven felony counts eight days before the general election in 2008, and a poll taken after the case collapsed the next year reportedly showed that the then 85-year-old Stevens would have won 2-1 if the election were run again.)
Thanks, Ted, for the Spending and the Helpful Laws
Then there is the gratitude. Ted Stevens delivered for Alaskans. People usually focus on the dollars, and there were billions and billions of those. Stevens concentrated most of his Capitol Hill career on his service on the Senate Appropriations Committee, where he ultimately ascended to the post of Chairman. In that capacity, he showered so much federal funding on Alaska that the state’s newspapers routinely used the term “Stevens money” without quotation marks to describe projects and programs from Washington, D.C. As Stevens said in his farewell Senate address, “Where there was nothing but tundra and forest, today there are now airports, roads, ports, water and sewer systems, hospitals, clinics, communications networks, research labs, and much, much more.”
Ted Stevens was the man who brought home the bacon (or the pork, as observers outside Alaska often called it). In the words of the writer Michael Carey, Stevens became “something of a frontier fertility god—worshipped, propitiated, feared."
But Alaskans tend to have some sense that Ted Stevens’ contributions to the state came in places other than the federal budget. As a Department of Interior official, Ted Stevens helped bring statehood. As a U.S. Senator, he played major roles in legislation that created Alaska Native corporations (the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, or ANCSA), helped make Alaska’s fisheries sustainable, and allowed the construction of the Trans Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS) that has brought so much wealth to Alaska’s economy.
Sophisticated insiders also recognize that Ted Stevens’ distinctive accomplishments in legislation required a shrewd sense of the possible, a knack for timing, a willingness to compromise, and even that seemingly un-Stevens quality of patience. As Mark Regan has noted, the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1978 (ANILCA) depended on Stevens' brokering a very complex compromise, and the law would not have passed without Stevens' almost infinitely patient work. Regan has also pointed out that Stevens was almost entirely responsible for passing legislation rescuing the Native corporations allowing them to sell their net operating losses; this move was only possible because Stevens and his staff saw how to do it.
“If Ted Stevens hadn't been there, land issues might still be uncertain, many Native corporations might have gone under, and fishing rights might still be as snarled as they were in the early 1970s,” Regan told me. “We can remember and celebrate him not for bringing home so much bacon, but for working out arrangements which have made it a whole lot easier for us to live and work together as Alaskans.”
The writer Charles Homans observed that “In the view of his constituents he was less Alaska's senator than its patriarch, the leader who guided Alaska's transformation from a territorial outpost to a modern petrostate.”
Alaskans seem to understand the correctness of the observation of the Almanac of American Politics that “No other senator fills so central a place in his state’s public and economic life as Ted Stevens of Alaska; quite possibly no other senator ever has.”
Only a Career Member of Congress Focused on Alaska Issues Could Stay Above the Fray and Command Respect Across Alaska’s Factions
Ted Stevens only kept his status as an icon across the decades, however, because he didn’t do what at least one of his Senate staff members thought likely 35 years ago. In 1975, a Capitol Hill aide to Stevens told me that there was speculation among the staff that the Senator would ultimately go back to Alaska and cap his career by serving as Governor.
Stevens’ long-time Senate colleague Frank Murkowski did that in 2002, and that move ended up destroying his image in the state. Murkowski went from routine re-election over 22 years in the Senate to finishing third in his own Republican primary when he ran for re-election as Governor in 2006.
Sen. Murkowski kept winning re-election because as a Senator he did not have to make decisions that divided Alaskans. Gov. Murkowski lost badly when he ran for re-election as Governor in part because he made some tough calls, which had him take aggressive positions on fiscal questions like state budget cuts vs. reductions in Permanent Fund Dividends vs. bringing back the state income tax on individuals.
Ted Stevens, on the other hand, stayed an Alaska hero because he maintained a laser-like focus on fighting for Alaskans against the federal government. He worked to get federal dollars for Alaska projects and programs; he maneuvered to make federal law favorable to Alaskans; and he stood up for individual Alaska constituents against federal agencies. As the state’s fierce lobbyist, clever lawyer, and superombudsman, Stevens was almost a cross between a Western hero played by John Wayne and star attorney Perry Mason of TV fame, the kind of champion you want on your side when the stakes are high and the odds are long.
Stevens was a gladiator for Greatlanders in the arena of Washington, D.C. Even if he didn’t always win, Alaskans could always see that he was trying his hardest. As U.S. Senator for Alaska, Stevens was the captain of the Last Frontier team, or even the chieftain of the Alaska tribe.
All that would have gone out the window if Ted Stevens had left the U.S. Senate to return to Alaska as Governor. As the state’s chief executive, he would have had to takes sides among Alaska’s warring clans on various issues, particularly fiscal matters. Stevens’ popularity would have plummeted, especially if falling oil prices forced him to make tough calls on budget and tax issues. The diminutive scrapper’s famously irritable and pugnacious personality would have not have worn as well with Alaskans if he had become the state’s chief executive. Serving as Governor would have made it much harder for Stevens to hang onto the idealized view of Alaska society he seemed to have as a Senator, which allowed him to believe that all boats would rise together if he just kept pouring enough federal dollars into the ocean. As Governor, Stevens would no longer have been “Uncle Ted”—he could easily have become in many Alaskans’ eyes “that knucklehead in Juneau.”
Ted Stevens was a smart man who worked hard for a long time to promote the best interests of Alaska as he saw them. His stature as an Alaska legend was immeasurably aided by his decision to stay in the U.S. Senate, where as a top-ranking federal official he could best fight the feds on behalf of his constituents.
An outpouring of grief has washed over Alaskans regarding the tragic passing of Ted Stevens. The former U.S. Senator died last week in a plane crash near Dillingham. In addition to Stevens, that accident took the lives of Dana Tindall, of Anchorage, a telecommunications executive; Tindall's daughter, Corey, a high school student; Washington, D.C., lobbyist Bill Phillips, a former chief of staff for Stevens; and the pilot, Terry Smith, of Eagle River, a retired Alaska Airlines chief pilot. The survivors were former NASA Administrator and ex-Stevens staff member Sean O’Keefe; O’Keefe’s son Kevin, a student; Washington, D.C.-area lobbyist Jim Morhard; and Phillips’ son Willy, a student.
Signs of mourning for Ted Stevens are all over. Large streetside signs reading “GOD BLESS TED STEVENS” and “HE LOVED ALASKA AND WE WILL MISS HIM SEN TED STEVENS” appear four blocks apart in Anchorage. A funeral home runs a radio spot in heavy rotation urging people to sign the official guestbook at its parlor and receive a program about the former Senator’s life.
There are no fewer than four events marking the end of his life in Anchorage this week. There was a Catholic mass Monday; a viewing of his casket today at his old home church, All Saints Episcopal; a procession tonight following that viewing from All Saints to Anchorage Baptist Temple; and finally the official memorial service at that megachurch on Wednesday at 2 p.m. The Anchorage Baptist Temple can hold more than 4,500 people, and Vice President Joe Biden is expected to be among those in the pews.
Love and Admiration
There appear to be several strands in this mourning for “Uncle Ted,” who served as U.S. Senator for Alaska for 40 years. For his family and friends, there is the obvious love for a man who was dedicated to those close to him. For many others who crossed his path over the years, there is affection and admiration for his many fine qualities—intelligence, hard work, devotion to Alaska and the interests of Alaskans as he saw them. Alaskans also treasure the bluntness that carried its own kind of charm: the skillfully used temper, the Incredible Hulk and Tasmanian devil ties, the tough-guy statements like “Senator, that’s not a threat, it’s a promise.” If the legendary Governor Jay Hammond personified Alaskans’ image of themselves as independent pioneers who run trap lines and build their own cabins, Ted Stevens personified the Last Frontier’s scrappy fighter side.
Grief Over the Loss of a Glorious Past
The mourning over the man who worked in Alaska public life for well over five decades also seems to reflect a nostalgia for an earlier time—the era in the 1950s and early 1960s when statehood was won and people worked to build the new state. Back then, Alaskans seemed more united, the politics seemed purer, and the Great Land seemed greater. Ted Stevens was the last prominent link to that period, and some of the grief seems to come from that longing for a time that now seems more glorious and less complicated. (Mingled with that nostalgia may be a strong sense of regret among Alaska voters. Stevens only lost re-election after a jury returned guilty verdicts against him on seven felony counts eight days before the general election in 2008, and a poll taken after the case collapsed the next year reportedly showed that the then 85-year-old Stevens would have won 2-1 if the election were run again.)
Thanks, Ted, for the Spending and the Helpful Laws
Then there is the gratitude. Ted Stevens delivered for Alaskans. People usually focus on the dollars, and there were billions and billions of those. Stevens concentrated most of his Capitol Hill career on his service on the Senate Appropriations Committee, where he ultimately ascended to the post of Chairman. In that capacity, he showered so much federal funding on Alaska that the state’s newspapers routinely used the term “Stevens money” without quotation marks to describe projects and programs from Washington, D.C. As Stevens said in his farewell Senate address, “Where there was nothing but tundra and forest, today there are now airports, roads, ports, water and sewer systems, hospitals, clinics, communications networks, research labs, and much, much more.”
Ted Stevens was the man who brought home the bacon (or the pork, as observers outside Alaska often called it). In the words of the writer Michael Carey, Stevens became “something of a frontier fertility god—worshipped, propitiated, feared."
But Alaskans tend to have some sense that Ted Stevens’ contributions to the state came in places other than the federal budget. As a Department of Interior official, Ted Stevens helped bring statehood. As a U.S. Senator, he played major roles in legislation that created Alaska Native corporations (the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, or ANCSA), helped make Alaska’s fisheries sustainable, and allowed the construction of the Trans Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS) that has brought so much wealth to Alaska’s economy.
Sophisticated insiders also recognize that Ted Stevens’ distinctive accomplishments in legislation required a shrewd sense of the possible, a knack for timing, a willingness to compromise, and even that seemingly un-Stevens quality of patience. As Mark Regan has noted, the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1978 (ANILCA) depended on Stevens' brokering a very complex compromise, and the law would not have passed without Stevens' almost infinitely patient work. Regan has also pointed out that Stevens was almost entirely responsible for passing legislation rescuing the Native corporations allowing them to sell their net operating losses; this move was only possible because Stevens and his staff saw how to do it.
“If Ted Stevens hadn't been there, land issues might still be uncertain, many Native corporations might have gone under, and fishing rights might still be as snarled as they were in the early 1970s,” Regan told me. “We can remember and celebrate him not for bringing home so much bacon, but for working out arrangements which have made it a whole lot easier for us to live and work together as Alaskans.”
The writer Charles Homans observed that “In the view of his constituents he was less Alaska's senator than its patriarch, the leader who guided Alaska's transformation from a territorial outpost to a modern petrostate.”
Alaskans seem to understand the correctness of the observation of the Almanac of American Politics that “No other senator fills so central a place in his state’s public and economic life as Ted Stevens of Alaska; quite possibly no other senator ever has.”
Only a Career Member of Congress Focused on Alaska Issues Could Stay Above the Fray and Command Respect Across Alaska’s Factions
Ted Stevens only kept his status as an icon across the decades, however, because he didn’t do what at least one of his Senate staff members thought likely 35 years ago. In 1975, a Capitol Hill aide to Stevens told me that there was speculation among the staff that the Senator would ultimately go back to Alaska and cap his career by serving as Governor.
Stevens’ long-time Senate colleague Frank Murkowski did that in 2002, and that move ended up destroying his image in the state. Murkowski went from routine re-election over 22 years in the Senate to finishing third in his own Republican primary when he ran for re-election as Governor in 2006.
Sen. Murkowski kept winning re-election because as a Senator he did not have to make decisions that divided Alaskans. Gov. Murkowski lost badly when he ran for re-election as Governor in part because he made some tough calls, which had him take aggressive positions on fiscal questions like state budget cuts vs. reductions in Permanent Fund Dividends vs. bringing back the state income tax on individuals.
Ted Stevens, on the other hand, stayed an Alaska hero because he maintained a laser-like focus on fighting for Alaskans against the federal government. He worked to get federal dollars for Alaska projects and programs; he maneuvered to make federal law favorable to Alaskans; and he stood up for individual Alaska constituents against federal agencies. As the state’s fierce lobbyist, clever lawyer, and superombudsman, Stevens was almost a cross between a Western hero played by John Wayne and star attorney Perry Mason of TV fame, the kind of champion you want on your side when the stakes are high and the odds are long.
Stevens was a gladiator for Greatlanders in the arena of Washington, D.C. Even if he didn’t always win, Alaskans could always see that he was trying his hardest. As U.S. Senator for Alaska, Stevens was the captain of the Last Frontier team, or even the chieftain of the Alaska tribe.
All that would have gone out the window if Ted Stevens had left the U.S. Senate to return to Alaska as Governor. As the state’s chief executive, he would have had to takes sides among Alaska’s warring clans on various issues, particularly fiscal matters. Stevens’ popularity would have plummeted, especially if falling oil prices forced him to make tough calls on budget and tax issues. The diminutive scrapper’s famously irritable and pugnacious personality would have not have worn as well with Alaskans if he had become the state’s chief executive. Serving as Governor would have made it much harder for Stevens to hang onto the idealized view of Alaska society he seemed to have as a Senator, which allowed him to believe that all boats would rise together if he just kept pouring enough federal dollars into the ocean. As Governor, Stevens would no longer have been “Uncle Ted”—he could easily have become in many Alaskans’ eyes “that knucklehead in Juneau.”
Ted Stevens was a smart man who worked hard for a long time to promote the best interests of Alaska as he saw them. His stature as an Alaska legend was immeasurably aided by his decision to stay in the U.S. Senate, where as a top-ranking federal official he could best fight the feds on behalf of his constituents.
Why Ted Stevens' Death Has Hit Alaska So Hard
Anchorage--
An outpouring of grief has washed over Alaskans regarding the tragic passing of Ted Stevens. The former U.S. Senator died last week in a plane crash near Dillingham. In addition to Stevens, that accident took the lives of Dana Tindall, of Anchorage, a telecommunications executive; Tindall's daughter, Corey, a high school student; Washington, D.C., lobbyist Bill Phillips, a former chief of staff for Stevens; and the pilot, Terry Smith, of Eagle River, a retired Alaska Airlines chief pilot. The survivors were former NASA Administrator and ex-Stevens staff member Sean O’Keefe; O’Keefe’s son Kevin, a student; Washington, D.C.-area lobbyist Jim Morhard; and Phillips’ son Willy, a student.
Signs of mourning for Ted Stevens are all over. Large streetside signs reading “GOD BLESS TED STEVENS” and “HE LOVED ALASKA AND WE WILL MISS HIM SEN TED STEVENS” appear four blocks apart in Anchorage. A funeral home runs a radio spot in heavy rotation urging people to sign the official guestbook at its parlor and receive a program about the former Senator’s life.
There are no fewer than four events marking the end of his life in Anchorage this week. There was a Catholic mass Monday; a viewing of his casket today at his old home church, All Saints Episcopal; a procession tonight following that viewing from All Saints to Anchorage Baptist Temple; and finally the official memorial service at that megachurch on Wednesday at 2 p.m. The Anchorage Baptist Temple can hold more than 4,500 people, and Vice President Joe Biden is expected to be among those in the pews.
Love and Admiration
There appear to be several strands in this mourning for “Uncle Ted,” who served as U.S. Senator for Alaska for 40 years. For his family and friends, there is the obvious love for a man who was dedicated to those close to him. For many others who crossed his path over the years, there is affection and admiration for his many fine qualities—intelligence, hard work, devotion to Alaska and the interests of Alaskans as he saw them. Alaskans also treasure the bluntness that carried its own kind of charm: the skillfully used temper, the Incredible Hulk and Tasmanian devil ties, the tough-guy statements like “Senator, that’s not a threat, it’s a promise.” If the legendary Governor Jay Hammond personified Alaskans’ image of themselves as independent pioneers who run trap lines and build their own cabins, Ted Stevens personified the Last Frontier’s scrappy fighter side.
Grief Over the Loss of a Glorious Past
The mourning over the man who worked in Alaska public life for well over five decades also seems to reflect a nostalgia for an earlier time—the era in the 1950s and early 1960s when statehood was won and people worked to build the new state. Back then, Alaskans seemed more united, the politics seemed purer, and the Great Land seemed greater. Ted Stevens was the last prominent link to that period, and some of the grief seems to come from that longing for a time that now seems more glorious and less complicated. (Mingled with that nostalgia may be a strong sense of regret among Alaska voters. Stevens only lost re-election after a jury returned guilty verdicts against him on seven felony counts eight days before the general election in 2008, and a poll taken after the case collapsed the next year reportedly showed that the then 85-year-old Stevens would have won 2-1 if the election were run again.)
Thanks, Ted, for the Spending and the Helpful Laws
Then there is the gratitude. Ted Stevens delivered for Alaskans. People usually focus on the dollars, and there were billions and billions of those. Stevens concentrated most of his Capitol Hill career on his service on the Senate Appropriations Committee, where he ultimately ascended to the post of Chairman. In that capacity, he showered so much federal funding on Alaska that the state’s newspapers routinely used the term “Stevens money” without quotation marks to describe projects and programs from Washington, D.C. As Stevens said in his farewell Senate address, “Where there was nothing but tundra and forest, today there are now airports, roads, ports, water and sewer systems, hospitals, clinics, communications networks, research labs, and much, much more.”
Ted Stevens was the man who brought home the bacon (or the pork, as observers outside Alaska often called it). In the words of the writer Michael Carey, Stevens became “something of a frontier fertility god—worshipped, propitiated, feared."
But Alaskans tend to have some sense that Ted Stevens’ contributions to the state came in places other than the federal budget. As a Department of Interior official, Ted Stevens helped bring statehood. As a U.S. Senator, he played major roles in legislation that created Alaska Native corporations (the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, or ANCSA), helped make Alaska’s fisheries sustainable, and allowed the construction of the Trans Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS) that has brought so much wealth to Alaska’s economy.
Sophisticated insiders also recognize that Ted Stevens’ distinctive accomplishments in legislation required a shrewd sense of the possible, a knack for timing, a willingness to compromise, and even that seemingly un-Stevens quality of patience. As Mark Regan has noted, the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1978 (ANILCA) depended on Stevens' brokering a very complex compromise, and the law would not have passed without Stevens' almost infinitely patient work. Regan has also pointed out that Stevens was almost entirely responsible for passing legislation rescuing the Native corporations allowing them to sell their net operating losses; this move was only possible because Stevens and his staff saw how to do it.
“If Ted Stevens hadn't been there, land issues might still be uncertain, many Native corporations might have gone under, and fishing rights might still be as snarled as they were in the early 1970s,” Regan told me. “We can remember and celebrate him not for bringing home so much bacon, but for working out arrangements which have made it a whole lot easier for us to live and work together as Alaskans.”
The writer Charles Homans observed that “In the view of his constituents he was less Alaska's senator than its patriarch, the leader who guided Alaska's transformation from a territorial outpost to a modern petrostate.”
Alaskans seem to understand the correctness of the observation of the Almanac of American Politics that “No other senator fills so central a place in his state’s public and economic life as Ted Stevens of Alaska; quite possibly no other senator ever has.”
Only a Career Member of Congress Focused on Alaska Issues Could Stay Above the Fray and Command Respect Across Alaska’s Factions
Ted Stevens only kept his status as an icon across the decades, however, because he didn’t do what at least one of his Senate staff members thought likely 35 years ago. In 1975, a Capitol Hill aide to Stevens told me that there was speculation among the staff that the Senator would ultimately go back to Alaska and cap his career by serving as Governor.
Stevens’ long-time Senate colleague Frank Murkowski did that in 2002, and that move ended up destroying his image in the state. Murkowski went from routine re-election over 22 years in the Senate to finishing third in his own Republican primary when he ran for re-election as Governor in 2006.
Sen. Murkowski kept winning re-election because as a Senator he did not have to make decisions that divided Alaskans. Gov. Murkowski lost badly when he ran for re-election as Governor in part because he made some tough calls, which had him take aggressive positions on fiscal questions like state budget cuts vs. reductions in Permanent Fund Dividends vs. bringing back the state income tax on individuals.
Ted Stevens, on the other hand, stayed an Alaska hero because he maintained a laser-like focus on fighting for Alaskans against the federal government. He worked to get federal dollars for Alaska projects and programs; he maneuvered to make federal law favorable to Alaskans; and he stood up for individual Alaska constituents against federal agencies. As the state’s fierce lobbyist, clever lawyer, and superombudsman, Stevens was almost a cross between a Western hero played by John Wayne and star attorney Perry Mason of TV fame, the kind of champion you want on your side when the stakes are high and the odds are long.
Stevens was a gladiator for Greatlanders in the arena of Washington, D.C. Even if he didn’t always win, Alaskans could always see that he was trying his hardest. As U.S. Senator for Alaska, Stevens was the captain of the Last Frontier team, or even the chieftain of the Alaska tribe.
All that would have gone out the window if Ted Stevens had left the U.S. Senate to return to Alaska as Governor. As the state’s chief executive, he would have had to takes sides among Alaska’s warring clans on various issues, particularly fiscal matters. Stevens’ popularity would have plummeted, especially if falling oil prices forced him to make tough calls on budget and tax issues. The diminutive scrapper’s famously irritable and pugnacious personality would have not have worn as well with Alaskans if he had become the state’s chief executive. Serving as Governor would have made it much harder for Stevens to hang onto the idealized view of Alaska society he seemed to have as a Senator, which allowed him to believe that all boats would rise together if he just kept pouring enough federal dollars into the ocean. As Governor, Stevens would no longer have been “Uncle Ted”—he could easily have become in many Alaskans’ eyes “that knucklehead in Juneau.”
Ted Stevens was a smart man who worked hard for a long time to promote the best interests of Alaska as he saw them. His stature as an Alaska legend was immeasurably aided by his decision to stay in the U.S. Senate, where as a top-ranking federal official he could best fight the feds on behalf of his constituents.
An outpouring of grief has washed over Alaskans regarding the tragic passing of Ted Stevens. The former U.S. Senator died last week in a plane crash near Dillingham. In addition to Stevens, that accident took the lives of Dana Tindall, of Anchorage, a telecommunications executive; Tindall's daughter, Corey, a high school student; Washington, D.C., lobbyist Bill Phillips, a former chief of staff for Stevens; and the pilot, Terry Smith, of Eagle River, a retired Alaska Airlines chief pilot. The survivors were former NASA Administrator and ex-Stevens staff member Sean O’Keefe; O’Keefe’s son Kevin, a student; Washington, D.C.-area lobbyist Jim Morhard; and Phillips’ son Willy, a student.
Signs of mourning for Ted Stevens are all over. Large streetside signs reading “GOD BLESS TED STEVENS” and “HE LOVED ALASKA AND WE WILL MISS HIM SEN TED STEVENS” appear four blocks apart in Anchorage. A funeral home runs a radio spot in heavy rotation urging people to sign the official guestbook at its parlor and receive a program about the former Senator’s life.
There are no fewer than four events marking the end of his life in Anchorage this week. There was a Catholic mass Monday; a viewing of his casket today at his old home church, All Saints Episcopal; a procession tonight following that viewing from All Saints to Anchorage Baptist Temple; and finally the official memorial service at that megachurch on Wednesday at 2 p.m. The Anchorage Baptist Temple can hold more than 4,500 people, and Vice President Joe Biden is expected to be among those in the pews.
Love and Admiration
There appear to be several strands in this mourning for “Uncle Ted,” who served as U.S. Senator for Alaska for 40 years. For his family and friends, there is the obvious love for a man who was dedicated to those close to him. For many others who crossed his path over the years, there is affection and admiration for his many fine qualities—intelligence, hard work, devotion to Alaska and the interests of Alaskans as he saw them. Alaskans also treasure the bluntness that carried its own kind of charm: the skillfully used temper, the Incredible Hulk and Tasmanian devil ties, the tough-guy statements like “Senator, that’s not a threat, it’s a promise.” If the legendary Governor Jay Hammond personified Alaskans’ image of themselves as independent pioneers who run trap lines and build their own cabins, Ted Stevens personified the Last Frontier’s scrappy fighter side.
Grief Over the Loss of a Glorious Past
The mourning over the man who worked in Alaska public life for well over five decades also seems to reflect a nostalgia for an earlier time—the era in the 1950s and early 1960s when statehood was won and people worked to build the new state. Back then, Alaskans seemed more united, the politics seemed purer, and the Great Land seemed greater. Ted Stevens was the last prominent link to that period, and some of the grief seems to come from that longing for a time that now seems more glorious and less complicated. (Mingled with that nostalgia may be a strong sense of regret among Alaska voters. Stevens only lost re-election after a jury returned guilty verdicts against him on seven felony counts eight days before the general election in 2008, and a poll taken after the case collapsed the next year reportedly showed that the then 85-year-old Stevens would have won 2-1 if the election were run again.)
Thanks, Ted, for the Spending and the Helpful Laws
Then there is the gratitude. Ted Stevens delivered for Alaskans. People usually focus on the dollars, and there were billions and billions of those. Stevens concentrated most of his Capitol Hill career on his service on the Senate Appropriations Committee, where he ultimately ascended to the post of Chairman. In that capacity, he showered so much federal funding on Alaska that the state’s newspapers routinely used the term “Stevens money” without quotation marks to describe projects and programs from Washington, D.C. As Stevens said in his farewell Senate address, “Where there was nothing but tundra and forest, today there are now airports, roads, ports, water and sewer systems, hospitals, clinics, communications networks, research labs, and much, much more.”
Ted Stevens was the man who brought home the bacon (or the pork, as observers outside Alaska often called it). In the words of the writer Michael Carey, Stevens became “something of a frontier fertility god—worshipped, propitiated, feared."
But Alaskans tend to have some sense that Ted Stevens’ contributions to the state came in places other than the federal budget. As a Department of Interior official, Ted Stevens helped bring statehood. As a U.S. Senator, he played major roles in legislation that created Alaska Native corporations (the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, or ANCSA), helped make Alaska’s fisheries sustainable, and allowed the construction of the Trans Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS) that has brought so much wealth to Alaska’s economy.
Sophisticated insiders also recognize that Ted Stevens’ distinctive accomplishments in legislation required a shrewd sense of the possible, a knack for timing, a willingness to compromise, and even that seemingly un-Stevens quality of patience. As Mark Regan has noted, the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1978 (ANILCA) depended on Stevens' brokering a very complex compromise, and the law would not have passed without Stevens' almost infinitely patient work. Regan has also pointed out that Stevens was almost entirely responsible for passing legislation rescuing the Native corporations allowing them to sell their net operating losses; this move was only possible because Stevens and his staff saw how to do it.
“If Ted Stevens hadn't been there, land issues might still be uncertain, many Native corporations might have gone under, and fishing rights might still be as snarled as they were in the early 1970s,” Regan told me. “We can remember and celebrate him not for bringing home so much bacon, but for working out arrangements which have made it a whole lot easier for us to live and work together as Alaskans.”
The writer Charles Homans observed that “In the view of his constituents he was less Alaska's senator than its patriarch, the leader who guided Alaska's transformation from a territorial outpost to a modern petrostate.”
Alaskans seem to understand the correctness of the observation of the Almanac of American Politics that “No other senator fills so central a place in his state’s public and economic life as Ted Stevens of Alaska; quite possibly no other senator ever has.”
Only a Career Member of Congress Focused on Alaska Issues Could Stay Above the Fray and Command Respect Across Alaska’s Factions
Ted Stevens only kept his status as an icon across the decades, however, because he didn’t do what at least one of his Senate staff members thought likely 35 years ago. In 1975, a Capitol Hill aide to Stevens told me that there was speculation among the staff that the Senator would ultimately go back to Alaska and cap his career by serving as Governor.
Stevens’ long-time Senate colleague Frank Murkowski did that in 2002, and that move ended up destroying his image in the state. Murkowski went from routine re-election over 22 years in the Senate to finishing third in his own Republican primary when he ran for re-election as Governor in 2006.
Sen. Murkowski kept winning re-election because as a Senator he did not have to make decisions that divided Alaskans. Gov. Murkowski lost badly when he ran for re-election as Governor in part because he made some tough calls, which had him take aggressive positions on fiscal questions like state budget cuts vs. reductions in Permanent Fund Dividends vs. bringing back the state income tax on individuals.
Ted Stevens, on the other hand, stayed an Alaska hero because he maintained a laser-like focus on fighting for Alaskans against the federal government. He worked to get federal dollars for Alaska projects and programs; he maneuvered to make federal law favorable to Alaskans; and he stood up for individual Alaska constituents against federal agencies. As the state’s fierce lobbyist, clever lawyer, and superombudsman, Stevens was almost a cross between a Western hero played by John Wayne and star attorney Perry Mason of TV fame, the kind of champion you want on your side when the stakes are high and the odds are long.
Stevens was a gladiator for Greatlanders in the arena of Washington, D.C. Even if he didn’t always win, Alaskans could always see that he was trying his hardest. As U.S. Senator for Alaska, Stevens was the captain of the Last Frontier team, or even the chieftain of the Alaska tribe.
All that would have gone out the window if Ted Stevens had left the U.S. Senate to return to Alaska as Governor. As the state’s chief executive, he would have had to takes sides among Alaska’s warring clans on various issues, particularly fiscal matters. Stevens’ popularity would have plummeted, especially if falling oil prices forced him to make tough calls on budget and tax issues. The diminutive scrapper’s famously irritable and pugnacious personality would have not have worn as well with Alaskans if he had become the state’s chief executive. Serving as Governor would have made it much harder for Stevens to hang onto the idealized view of Alaska society he seemed to have as a Senator, which allowed him to believe that all boats would rise together if he just kept pouring enough federal dollars into the ocean. As Governor, Stevens would no longer have been “Uncle Ted”—he could easily have become in many Alaskans’ eyes “that knucklehead in Juneau.”
Ted Stevens was a smart man who worked hard for a long time to promote the best interests of Alaska as he saw them. His stature as an Alaska legend was immeasurably aided by his decision to stay in the U.S. Senate, where as a top-ranking federal official he could best fight the feds on behalf of his constituents.
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Judge Sedwick Turns Down Vic Kohring's Attempts to Either Get His Case Thrown Out or Get a New Trial
Anchorage—
As noted above, U.S. District Court Judge John Sedwick today rejected ex-State Rep. Vic Kohring’s efforts to get relief based on the prosecution’s admitted failures to turn over before trial evidence favorable to the former Republican legislator from Wasilla.
It’s worth going over this 31-page ruling in bullet point style:
1. To Judge Sedwick, ex-VECO CEO Bill Allen was so obviously crooked as of the first half of 2006 that anybody around the legislature with a room temperature IQ could see it. On March 30, 2006, Kohring went to see the “notorious” Allen in the Baranof Hotel’s Suite 604, “the location which Kohring knew was the very center of Allen’s web of corruption in Juneau.”
2. The judge does not buy any argument that Vic Kohring was too clueless, too honest, or too powerless to commit the crimes for which he was convicted. As to the former lawmaker’s character, the court states that “While Kohring may not have been an inherently corrupt individual, at some point he became motivated to engage in political corruption.”
3. The judge believes that the FBI surveillance videotape showing Kohring’s meeting with Allen in Suite 604 on March 30, 2006 conclusively establishes Kohring’s guilt, notwithstanding any of the evidence the government wrongfully withheld. The judge focuses on Count 3 of the indictment of Kohring, which charged him with attempted extortion. Judge Sedwick looks at the videotape showing Kohring going over to Suite 604 to ask Allen to help with Kohring’s $17,000 credit card bill. The judge notes that this approach occurred during the legislature’s consideration of the proposed Petroleum Profits Tax (PPT) bill, oil-tax legislation Allen clearly was lobbying heavily. Add it all up, and the judge sees an obviously corrupt solicitation amounting to attempted extortion.
The court emphasizes the legal rule that a convicted defendant seeking relief based on the government’s failure to disclose evidence before trial must demonstrate a reasonable probability that the withheld evidence affected the jury’s verdict. (Although the judge would not use this term, this concept is similar to the cry of “No harm, no foul” you might hear in pick-up basketball.) The judge views the tape of the March 30 meeting as so incriminating that the prosecution’s failure to disclose did not make a difference in the outcome. “The court cannot bend or warp its understanding of the videotape into a shape that raises any reasonable probability that Kohring would not have been convicted on Count 3 by any jury which saw the videotape and contemplated what it saw in the context of Allen’s mission in Juneau and the inescapable inference from the evidence as a whole that Kohring understood and was willing to help with Allen’s corrupt mission.” The judge also points to Kohring’s recorded voice mail messages to Allen’s chief political lieutenant Rick Smith the next day detailing the legislator’s efforts on behalf of what he knew Allen and Smith wanted regarding oil-tax legislation. To Judge Sedwick, those recorded messages are the cherry on top of Vic Kohring’s guilty sundae.
4. In what Kohring’s lawyers must tonight be damning as unfair jiu-jitsu, the judge relies heavily on the fact that the jury acquitted the defendant of the charge of actual (not attempted) extortion to let stand the convictions on three other charges. Judge Sedwick reasons that the evidence wrongfully withheld by the prosecution could undermine confidence in convictions based on alleged cash payments by Allen to Kohring. As the judge notes, some of the previously undisclosed evidence shows that Allen sometimes told prosecutors that he made those cash payments as gifts or as expressions of pity and did not intend them as bribes. The judge also notes that those alleged cash payments would provide a basis to convict Kohring of extortion, but the jury acquitted Kohring of that charge.
The judge concludes, however, that the charge of attempted extortion in Count 3 was based on Kohring’s solicitation of help on his $17,000 credit card bill and not on any of the payments totaling up to $2,600 that Allen made to Kohring or the job at VECO worth $3,000 given to the lawmaker’s nephew. The judge rules that the March 30 videotape and the recorded messages of March 31 support the conviction for attempted extortion in Count 3. Judge Sedwick also announces that the same recorded evidence could provide the basis for the convictions for conspiracy to commit extortion and attempted extortion (Count 1) and bribery (Count 4).
Accordingly, confidence in those three convictions based on taped evidence cannot be shaken by any withheld evidence about Allen’s shaky memory, Allen’s evolving accounts of his past actions, or inconsistencies between Allen’s and Smith’s recollections of the circumstances or purposes of any payments to Kohring. Once again, the tapes trump, and undisputed evidence on the tapes can compensate for undisclosed evidence that was not taped.
Ironically, this means that the famous “Easter egg” shot of Allen giving cash to Kohring on March 30—the iconic image of the whole federal investigation into Alaska public corruption—is not even conduct for which Kohring was convicted.
5. Despite his denial of Kohring’s requests for dismissal of the charges, a new trial, or an evidentiary hearing, Judge Sedwick is letting the former legislator walk around free while his lawyers pursue an appeal to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. “Although this court has not found a sufficient basis to order a new trial or dismissal of the indictment, it is certainly possible that the Circuit Court will see the matter differently.” Given that Kohring is neither a flight risk nor a danger to public safety, Judge Sedwick will let him remain on release pending appeal.
As noted above, U.S. District Court Judge John Sedwick today rejected ex-State Rep. Vic Kohring’s efforts to get relief based on the prosecution’s admitted failures to turn over before trial evidence favorable to the former Republican legislator from Wasilla.
It’s worth going over this 31-page ruling in bullet point style:
1. To Judge Sedwick, ex-VECO CEO Bill Allen was so obviously crooked as of the first half of 2006 that anybody around the legislature with a room temperature IQ could see it. On March 30, 2006, Kohring went to see the “notorious” Allen in the Baranof Hotel’s Suite 604, “the location which Kohring knew was the very center of Allen’s web of corruption in Juneau.”
2. The judge does not buy any argument that Vic Kohring was too clueless, too honest, or too powerless to commit the crimes for which he was convicted. As to the former lawmaker’s character, the court states that “While Kohring may not have been an inherently corrupt individual, at some point he became motivated to engage in political corruption.”
3. The judge believes that the FBI surveillance videotape showing Kohring’s meeting with Allen in Suite 604 on March 30, 2006 conclusively establishes Kohring’s guilt, notwithstanding any of the evidence the government wrongfully withheld. The judge focuses on Count 3 of the indictment of Kohring, which charged him with attempted extortion. Judge Sedwick looks at the videotape showing Kohring going over to Suite 604 to ask Allen to help with Kohring’s $17,000 credit card bill. The judge notes that this approach occurred during the legislature’s consideration of the proposed Petroleum Profits Tax (PPT) bill, oil-tax legislation Allen clearly was lobbying heavily. Add it all up, and the judge sees an obviously corrupt solicitation amounting to attempted extortion.
The court emphasizes the legal rule that a convicted defendant seeking relief based on the government’s failure to disclose evidence before trial must demonstrate a reasonable probability that the withheld evidence affected the jury’s verdict. (Although the judge would not use this term, this concept is similar to the cry of “No harm, no foul” you might hear in pick-up basketball.) The judge views the tape of the March 30 meeting as so incriminating that the prosecution’s failure to disclose did not make a difference in the outcome. “The court cannot bend or warp its understanding of the videotape into a shape that raises any reasonable probability that Kohring would not have been convicted on Count 3 by any jury which saw the videotape and contemplated what it saw in the context of Allen’s mission in Juneau and the inescapable inference from the evidence as a whole that Kohring understood and was willing to help with Allen’s corrupt mission.” The judge also points to Kohring’s recorded voice mail messages to Allen’s chief political lieutenant Rick Smith the next day detailing the legislator’s efforts on behalf of what he knew Allen and Smith wanted regarding oil-tax legislation. To Judge Sedwick, those recorded messages are the cherry on top of Vic Kohring’s guilty sundae.
4. In what Kohring’s lawyers must tonight be damning as unfair jiu-jitsu, the judge relies heavily on the fact that the jury acquitted the defendant of the charge of actual (not attempted) extortion to let stand the convictions on three other charges. Judge Sedwick reasons that the evidence wrongfully withheld by the prosecution could undermine confidence in convictions based on alleged cash payments by Allen to Kohring. As the judge notes, some of the previously undisclosed evidence shows that Allen sometimes told prosecutors that he made those cash payments as gifts or as expressions of pity and did not intend them as bribes. The judge also notes that those alleged cash payments would provide a basis to convict Kohring of extortion, but the jury acquitted Kohring of that charge.
The judge concludes, however, that the charge of attempted extortion in Count 3 was based on Kohring’s solicitation of help on his $17,000 credit card bill and not on any of the payments totaling up to $2,600 that Allen made to Kohring or the job at VECO worth $3,000 given to the lawmaker’s nephew. The judge rules that the March 30 videotape and the recorded messages of March 31 support the conviction for attempted extortion in Count 3. Judge Sedwick also announces that the same recorded evidence could provide the basis for the convictions for conspiracy to commit extortion and attempted extortion (Count 1) and bribery (Count 4).
Accordingly, confidence in those three convictions based on taped evidence cannot be shaken by any withheld evidence about Allen’s shaky memory, Allen’s evolving accounts of his past actions, or inconsistencies between Allen’s and Smith’s recollections of the circumstances or purposes of any payments to Kohring. Once again, the tapes trump, and undisputed evidence on the tapes can compensate for undisclosed evidence that was not taped.
Ironically, this means that the famous “Easter egg” shot of Allen giving cash to Kohring on March 30—the iconic image of the whole federal investigation into Alaska public corruption—is not even conduct for which Kohring was convicted.
5. Despite his denial of Kohring’s requests for dismissal of the charges, a new trial, or an evidentiary hearing, Judge Sedwick is letting the former legislator walk around free while his lawyers pursue an appeal to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. “Although this court has not found a sufficient basis to order a new trial or dismissal of the indictment, it is certainly possible that the Circuit Court will see the matter differently.” Given that Kohring is neither a flight risk nor a danger to public safety, Judge Sedwick will let him remain on release pending appeal.
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Applying "No Harm, No Foul" Principle, Judge Lets Vic Kohring's Convictions Stand
Anchorage--
U.S. District Judge John Sedwick has ruled that former State Rep. Vic Kohring's corruption-related convictions will stay in place. The court announced today that FBI surveillance tapes of Kohring's interactions with ex-VECO CEO Bill Allen and Allen's chief political lieutenant Rick Smith showed the former Wasilla Republican lawmaker's guilt so conclusively that it wouldn't have mattered if the government had given to the defense before the trial all the evidence the defense was entitled to get.
I have to run off to an appointment, so there's more to come later.
U.S. District Judge John Sedwick has ruled that former State Rep. Vic Kohring's corruption-related convictions will stay in place. The court announced today that FBI surveillance tapes of Kohring's interactions with ex-VECO CEO Bill Allen and Allen's chief political lieutenant Rick Smith showed the former Wasilla Republican lawmaker's guilt so conclusively that it wouldn't have mattered if the government had given to the defense before the trial all the evidence the defense was entitled to get.
I have to run off to an appointment, so there's more to come later.
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
RIP, Ted Stevens
Anchorage—
Officials have confirmed that former U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens (R.-Alaska) has died in a plane crash in southwest Alaska that has killed four other people and left four more injured.
I have written at great length on this blog about Ted Stevens’ life and career as well as the criminal charges he faced in 2008 and 2009. Tributes, memorials, and critiques are all over the media today as well as expressions of condolences and sympathies for the dead, the injured, and their loved ones. I’ll confine myself this afternoon to a couple of observations about the way Ted Stevens died and some things we could do today in line with the way he lived his 86 years:
1. It’s terribly ironic that Ted Stevens died flying. He obviously relished flying as a military pilot in World War II and as an avid recreational pilot during his years in Alaska. (Those years in the Great Land began when he and his first wife Ann arrived in Fairbanks in 1953, not 1950 as I mistakenly wrote this morning.)
Ted Stevens also had to fly a great deal as a passenger during his 40 years serving as one of Alaska’s two U.S. Senators. Stevens made the more than 6,000-mile round trip between Anchorage and Washington, D.C. hundreds of times during those four decades. He flew extensively around the Great Land on trips to campaign and work as a Senator, and he jetted around the world to fulfill his Congressional duties.
Stevens worked hard in the Senate to improve Alaska aviation, and the state’s largest airport is named after him.
Alaska aviation needs a lot of improvement, because flying in the Last Frontier is uniquely hazardous. Alaska has a lot of land, and most places have no road to them. Often the planes are small, the flights are unscheduled, the aids to navigation are rare, the weather is bad, the terrain is harsh and remote, and the distances are long from point to point. Flying in Alaska can sometimes seem like dicing with death, and Stevens had seen the numbers fall the wrong way before. Stevens’ first wife Ann died in a plane crash in Anchorage in 1978 that killed four other people and left him seriously injured and one of only two survivors. Even before that tragedy three decades ago at the airport that would later be named after him, he had reportedly said that he had a premonition that he would die in a plane crash.
2. Let’s focus today on some of the positive and practical lessons of Ted Stevens’ life. The “Alaskan of the Century” and longest serving Republican Senator ever was a giant of the Last Frontier and the U.S. Senate, but his life as a man can also teach us. Any fair account of Ted Stevens’ life has to address the mistakes he made that contributed to the prosecution that produced seven jury verdicts of guilty against him in 2008 before that prosecution blew up the next year due to acknowledged misconduct by government lawyers. But today, let’s think of the simpler things that this man learned during his long life and tried to tell others. Love your family, and do your best to spend as much time as you can with them. Exercise—it will improve your mind as well as your body. Work hard, and study enough to learn what you need to know in order to do your job.
Officials have confirmed that former U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens (R.-Alaska) has died in a plane crash in southwest Alaska that has killed four other people and left four more injured.
I have written at great length on this blog about Ted Stevens’ life and career as well as the criminal charges he faced in 2008 and 2009. Tributes, memorials, and critiques are all over the media today as well as expressions of condolences and sympathies for the dead, the injured, and their loved ones. I’ll confine myself this afternoon to a couple of observations about the way Ted Stevens died and some things we could do today in line with the way he lived his 86 years:
1. It’s terribly ironic that Ted Stevens died flying. He obviously relished flying as a military pilot in World War II and as an avid recreational pilot during his years in Alaska. (Those years in the Great Land began when he and his first wife Ann arrived in Fairbanks in 1953, not 1950 as I mistakenly wrote this morning.)
Ted Stevens also had to fly a great deal as a passenger during his 40 years serving as one of Alaska’s two U.S. Senators. Stevens made the more than 6,000-mile round trip between Anchorage and Washington, D.C. hundreds of times during those four decades. He flew extensively around the Great Land on trips to campaign and work as a Senator, and he jetted around the world to fulfill his Congressional duties.
Stevens worked hard in the Senate to improve Alaska aviation, and the state’s largest airport is named after him.
Alaska aviation needs a lot of improvement, because flying in the Last Frontier is uniquely hazardous. Alaska has a lot of land, and most places have no road to them. Often the planes are small, the flights are unscheduled, the aids to navigation are rare, the weather is bad, the terrain is harsh and remote, and the distances are long from point to point. Flying in Alaska can sometimes seem like dicing with death, and Stevens had seen the numbers fall the wrong way before. Stevens’ first wife Ann died in a plane crash in Anchorage in 1978 that killed four other people and left him seriously injured and one of only two survivors. Even before that tragedy three decades ago at the airport that would later be named after him, he had reportedly said that he had a premonition that he would die in a plane crash.
2. Let’s focus today on some of the positive and practical lessons of Ted Stevens’ life. The “Alaskan of the Century” and longest serving Republican Senator ever was a giant of the Last Frontier and the U.S. Senate, but his life as a man can also teach us. Any fair account of Ted Stevens’ life has to address the mistakes he made that contributed to the prosecution that produced seven jury verdicts of guilty against him in 2008 before that prosecution blew up the next year due to acknowledged misconduct by government lawyers. But today, let’s think of the simpler things that this man learned during his long life and tried to tell others. Love your family, and do your best to spend as much time as you can with them. Exercise—it will improve your mind as well as your body. Work hard, and study enough to learn what you need to know in order to do your job.
Ted Stevens Apparently in Serious Plane Crash in Rural Alaska
Anchorage--
Former U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens (R.-Alaska) is reported to have been a passenger on a plane that apparently crashed in southwest Alaska and killed five of the nine people aboard. Other people on the plane apparently include former NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe, who used to work for Stevens on Capitol Hill.
Details are still sketchy, as bad weather has hampered access to the scene.
Ted Stevens has got to be one of the most experienced fliers in the world who has not been a professional pilot most of his life. Stevens was a military pilot during World War II and a recreational pilot after moving to Alaska in 1950. Although visitors to Alaska often concern themselves with the possibility of bear attacks, the bigger dangers on the Last Frontier are light plane crashes and drowning. Stevens himself barely survived a crash in Anchorage in 1978 that killed his wife and four others among the seven on the plane.
Initial reports about incidents in remote areas are often wrong, so hope for the best.
Former U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens (R.-Alaska) is reported to have been a passenger on a plane that apparently crashed in southwest Alaska and killed five of the nine people aboard. Other people on the plane apparently include former NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe, who used to work for Stevens on Capitol Hill.
Details are still sketchy, as bad weather has hampered access to the scene.
Ted Stevens has got to be one of the most experienced fliers in the world who has not been a professional pilot most of his life. Stevens was a military pilot during World War II and a recreational pilot after moving to Alaska in 1950. Although visitors to Alaska often concern themselves with the possibility of bear attacks, the bigger dangers on the Last Frontier are light plane crashes and drowning. Stevens himself barely survived a crash in Anchorage in 1978 that killed his wife and four others among the seven on the plane.
Initial reports about incidents in remote areas are often wrong, so hope for the best.
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