A Hint of What is to Come in the Kohring Trial

Last week I dropped by the Court House to go through the Kohring Docket. I was struck by the huge difference in how the Defense and Prosecution told the story about how the FBI contacted Kohring, searched his office, and interrogated Kohring. They have the same characters and locale, but what happens in each is extremely different. This all got written up because the defense wanted all the evidence gathered in the search and the interrogation to be dismissed because Kohring wasn't told his Miranda Rights. Below is the story from the court documents so you can read it yourself. In light of Lisa Demer's recent article this may be a clue to how this trial is going to go. First, here I'm posting the Defense's Statement of Facts. Then tomorrow I'll post what the Prosecution said about the same events. Then I'll talk about this in a third post in relation to what has transpired in the last week. The trial begins a week from Monday, on October 22, 2005.

NOTE: First I used my digital camera to take pictures of the documents on the computer screen. I thought that was hard to read, so I broke down and got a Pacer account (that allows you to get US Court documents on the web.) They came out as PDF files I can't cut and paste text. So these are really small. But you can click on the picture of the document and it will appear large enough to read reasonably comfortably. I've also left the computer images below so you can see the difference, and even let me know if you have a preference. You can enlarge those too.


Kohring Defense "MOTION TO SUPPRESS STATEMENTS ELICITED IN VIOLATION OF MIRANDA AND THE FIFTH AMENDMENT"

Statement of Facts: [Click on Document to Enlarge]













The following is the same material but as photos from the Court Clerk's public computer. I added the description because the pictures are so bad. You can click them to enlarge them. If you read the stuff above, it's the same thing just in a different format.

Page 1 of "MOTION TO SUPPRESS STATEMENTS ELICITED IN VIOLATION OF MIRANDA AND THE FIFTH AMENDMENT" Statement of Facts begins on line 19, starts, "On August 31, 2006, at roughly eleven in the morning, Special Agent Alan Vanderploeg of the FBI called State Representative Victor Kohring on his cellular telephone and insisted upon meeting with him in person at his Wasilla legislative offices." Click on the picture below to enlarge it to readable size.





Pages 2-3, begin..."to his Wasilla offices because it was 'very important." Vanderploeg, though never disclosed the nature of the "very important" business. Ex. A. Decl. of Victor Kohring.
Upon Kohring's arrival approximately fifteen minutes later, five armed FBI agents who were already waiting there, created a quite intimidating scene in the Wasilla Legislative Office Building before attemptig to gain his cnsent for a search of the premises." Click on the photo to enlarge to readable size.