Kohring Trial Day 2 - Jury Selected

The street was white when I got the paper this morning. When I read Lisa Demer's article, I realized that the jury selection got further along yesterday afternoon than I expected. I debated whether to drive or get another bike trip in before the trails are too icy. So I didn't get to court until 10:50am.

By my quick count the jury had seven men and five women. The alternates were two men and a woman. Very different composition from the previous trials.

This was supposed to go up at lunch. Don't know why it didn't.

Mark Twain's "The War Prayer"

There was a reading at Cyrano's tonight of Mark Twain's The War Prayer. It's very short and you can read it at the link. The program cites Kevin Drum,

"His family begged him not to publish it, his friends advised him to bury it, and his publisher rejected it, thinking it too inflammatory for the times. Twain agreed, but instructed that it be published after his death, saying famously: "None but the dead are permitted to tell the truth.

After the reading there was a discussion featuring representatives of Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, and Christianity sponsored by the Interfaith Council. The question was "How can God be on Everyone's Side?"

The comment that was most enlightening to me was from Rev Koun Franz in response to what a good Buddhist would do if he saw someone violently assaulting another. It would be ok to intervene, he said, if you did it for the right reason, which would be to help both people. If you intervened from moral superiority to punish the aggressor you would cause a short term benefit, but you would be perpetuating what the aggressor was doing. This helps me understand a story I heard the other day about a survivor of the Mi Lai massacre during the Vietnam war. Asked today what she thought about Americans coming to Mi Lai today, she said she was glad they came. What if it was one of the people who killed her family? That would be even better, because then I could forgive them.

How different is that way of thinking about the world from an eye for an eye.

Kohring Trial Day 1 - Jury Selection and the Defense Attorney

9:00 AM

3:07-CR-00055-JWS

Judge Sedwick

Anchorage Courtroom 3

USA vs. VICTOR H. KOHRING
TRIAL BY JURY - DAY 1

Today was devoted to jury selection. Judge Sedwick used the same process he used in the Kott and Anderson trials. The first part already happened - the elimination of potential jurists based on their questionnaires. From what I understand, those who expressed bias about the case there, have been eliminated. When I walked into court today, about 9:15 am, the gallery was packed by people with little blue stickers on their chests that said "Juror."

I missed the first part, but I imagine it was the same as the Kott trial - jurors were introduced to the various parties, told the charges, given instructions about their job and restrictions about talking to others or viewing news about the case. Another court observer told me that one of the potential witnesses, Fred James, was given permission to be in the courtroom for the jury selection process. He's one of the two writers of the USA v. Victor H. Kohring blog I mentioned yesterday. What I hadn't realized was that the two writers have different views on the defendant and the blog will reflect this. James, I was told, is a long time, good friend of Kohring's.

Anyway, the jury was sent out and then they were brought back in, one-at-a-time to answer questions about their awareness of the case, the people involved in the case, and whether they could be fair and unbiased. The basic questions the judge asked were:
1. Where do you get your news?
2. Do you remember anything from the news about Kohring or Veco, Bill Allen, Rick Smith?
If they did, then
3. What do you know, have you formed an opinion, could you give a fair hearing. One question he asked along these lines to one or two jurors was, "If you were the defendant, would you want someone like you on the jury?"

Most of the jurors said they don't pay much attention to politics and don't know much or anything about the case. My sense this time round - I stayed for the first 29 jurors and the lunch break - was that even when they said they knew nothing, they tended not to be as oblivious as that suggested. When pressed they often knew something

Two jurors, while I was there, were dismissed. One because she had a back problem and sitting for long times caused her pain. Another, a full time student who works full time hadn't asked to be dismissed. The judge asked if this would affect his studies. He said he'd miss some midterms. The judge asked why he hadn't asked to get out. "Several people told me it wouldn't do any good." The judge said, "Well this court is a little friendlier. A two day trial would be ok, but a two week trial would really affect your studies. I'm going to excuse you."

One juror met Rick Smith, a likely witness, smoking outside Reilly's Bar several times. Another juror who works at Cal Worthington Ford, met Bill Allen there. A third juror had been at meetings of his Community Council when Vic Kohring attended. Alaska is a small place.

Jury Composition

The jury looked different from the Anderson and Kott jury pools. The most striking difference was the relative balance of genders. The Kott trial ended up with ten women and two men. But today, in the first 29 jurors questioned, 15 were men, 14 were women. There were two African Americans, a person from Bethel and one from Unalaska, if I understood right. The ages of the jurors seemed more evenly distributed than the prior two jurors - the Anderson jury being particularly young looking. And there was even one gentleman who had on a tie!

John Henry Browne

For me the big unknown was the defense attorney. When I walked in, I saw him from behind and thought he was younger until he turned and faced the gallery. He was wearing what looked like an expensive light grey suit with just a touch of green. His shirt was just barely pink. The prosecutors, in comparison, were in dark, dark grey to black suits with white shirts, except for Mr. Goeke who had a beige shirt. Even Agent Mary Beth Kepner [Thanks, Steve, I was getting tired when I did that] had on a grey suit. And Mr. Browne's hair also looked expensive - basically brown with what would have been called surfer blond streaks where I grew up near Venice Beach. OK, I know what some of you are thinking. But this is not intended as a fashion evaluation of the attorneys. I do think, however, that the dress does tell us something about people. Browne very definitely pays attention to how he looks. He also has trouble talking without moving. If his arms aren't moving, or his hands, then his fingers are moving. A few times I could even see the muscles in his back moving through his jacket. And this was just very low key questions to the jury.

His voice is radio quality deep and his intonation is precise, more articulated than most American speakers naturally talk. Perhaps he's done some acting or had other voice coaching.

When he asked questions of the jurors, or even when he didn't, he would say, "Good morning" in the same exact tone which sounded warm and interested the first time, but after hearing it repeated precisely many times, it began to sound canned. For two jurors, he said something like, "Your comments were much more extensive than the other jurors" which I thought sounded like calculated flattery, and which caused Prosecutor Botinni to object to the "unnecessary editorial comments" about juror performance. The judge concurred.

He also addressed the court twice, between jurors, with two questions that I thought seemed inappropriate. The first time he wanted to know about jurors who came from outside of Anchorage - who paid for them? (The court pays their airfare and hotel, but they don't go back for weekends the judge replied.) The second question was whether the jurors came from all of Alaska. The judge explained that they only came from the Anchorage district, which was a large district, stretching from Cordova to the Aleutians. It just seemed to me that these were curiosity items, that I would have written down and checked on later. Or, as the Outside defense attorney, I would have found out before the trial. And being an Outside attorney - the local attorney Wayne Anthony Ross was not there today - he wouldn't understand the implications of what local talk show hosts the jurors said they listened to.

Overall, his behavior reinforced the impression I've gotten in the pretrial press coverage. This is the Seattle attorney who is coming to the boondocks to try a case. If that really is the way he's thinking, I suspect he's in for a big surprise. Judge Sedwick has run very tight, but fair, trials. His excusing of the full time student today is an example of his practical understanding of what makes sense and what doesn't. The prosecution has done an overwhelming amount of work and have been extremely well prepared. The teams at the previous two trials were one local attorney and one from the DC based Public Integrity Section. These guys do their homework. The pairing for this trial is Joe Botinni, whose been in the Anchorage US Attorney Office for many years, and Edward P. Sullivan from DC. On the other hand, it does seem that the taped evidence is likely to be not as damaging as in the other cases, and that Kohring might appear to have been less calculating than Kott or Anderson in working out ways to get paid. We will see.

Chicago Today - Circa 1935

We've got an extra bedroom downstairs that is essentially a store room that needs to be sorted out. Going through some of my father's old stuff, I came across this soft cover guide to Chicago, that I'm guessing was published in 1936. For a booklet entitled "Chicago Today" you'd think somewhere it would have a date. I've copied the pages here in high resolution so you can double click to enlarge them and see how good the photos are. This is just a few of the 65 or so pages. (No page numbers either.)




Edward Kelly was mayor of Chicago from 1933 to 1947 according to the Chicago public library So that doesn't narrow the date down much - 1933 at the earliest.



But here it says "Chicago -one hundred and three years ago was a 'mud hole trading post.'" And further down the page it says "In the spring of 1833 Chicago was incorporated and numbered at that time 550 people." So I'm calculating 1833 + 103 years = 1936. I see I should have left all the pages the original color. I changed some to black and white thinking a) the pages were black and white (which you can see they really aren't) and b) you would be able to read them better (which you can if you click on them.) It also says, "...and destined to become the world's largest city by 1968."

State and Madison Streets

Lake Shore Drive from the Drake Hotel and Michigan Boulevard from Chicago Ave

Skyline showing Grant Park and Michigan Boulevard

Aviation - "Daily 110 planes arrive and depart bearing some 500 passengers. During 1934 - 40,226 planes arrived and 40,266 planes took off." Ok, this also means we are after 1934 and where did the 40 extra planes that took off come from anyway? And that means an average of 5 passengers per plane!

Famous Restaurants. I'm not a Chicago boy so I don't know what's still around, if anything.

Baseball - Wriggly Field and Comiskey Field

Chicago Leads and Interesting Facts - Among the facts are more clues about the date of the book. "January 1935 brought 6,231 buyers to the Furniture Mart..." This was the latest date I could find, also suggesting the book was published in 1936.


Well, it was chartered in 1833 and incorporated in 1837. So I'm sticking with 1936 as the date of publication for now. But someone looking closer might find a later automobile or some other reference that could put it later.

Michael Clayton

I walked out of Michael Clayton feeling like I'd been to a good restaurant but the food just wasn't satisfying. This is Erin Brockavich from the viewpoint of one of the attorneys trying to screw over the class action victims. But there wasn't any soul. Listening to real life corrupt business men this summer in the US District court telling their stories maybe makes this story seem thin.





I'm not sure why the video quality of the clips is so bad. As usual, this is not a spoiler, but gives you a sense of the film if you don't pay attention to the subtitles.

New Blog to Cover Kohring Trial

Philip Munger and Fred James have set up a new blog USA vs Victor H. Kohring. They are two Valley residents so they have a particular interest in their representative's trail. They have a long list of links to trial related websites. Here's what they say about themselves:

Philip Munger: I've been involved in Alaska politics since 1973, and have been on a first-name basis with all my legislators, local, state and national ever since. I've worked at sea, in law enforcement and public safety, and have been a college music teacher since 1995. I'm mostly known in Alaska as a composer. My politics tend to the left, most notably on environmental and social justice issues. My community activism finds me on the board of Friends of Mat-Su, a local body concerned with zoning and quality-of-life issues in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough. I'm a Democrat, and am currently volunteering as the Issues Coordinator for the Diane Benson for U.S. Congress campaign. I live near Palmer, Alaska.

Fred James:

Fred won't be able to attend the first part of the trial, as he may be called as a witness for the defense, and Judge Sedgewick has ruled such potential witnesses are barred from the courtroom until they testify. But he isn't gagged or barred from commenting on whatever he finds out through other means.

Hijacked Linksys Routers

I've spent way too much time in the last two days trying to get my Linksys router sorted out. My son had given it to us a while ago. When I got my MacBook I finally got the wireless working and my wife's computer could still get internet too.
MAC ID
Key Points:

If the Linksys router is simply set up without changing the name and without password protection, it appears that only one Linksys label shows up when you look to connect, even if there are several. Unless you change it like some of my neighbors have to Linksysa and Linksys71.

So, I got on someone else's Linksys connection, changed the name, put on a password. It was only when I wanted to change things that my friend Jeremy pointed out that I wasn't connected to my own router. You can check the MAC ID ((media access control identification card) on the bottom of the router. In Airport, if you click on "Open Internet Connect" at the bottom of the list of connections above you get this next window. The base station ID appears to be the MAC ID.















Killer Tip to Free Your hijacked Router: If someone seems to have hijacked your Linksys router - as I inadvertently did to one of my neighbors - you can reset your router back to the default settings. There's a little hole in the back of the Linksys router. If you push the button in the hole in back (see red arrow in picture of router) for 30 seconds, with a pen point or paper clip, then still holding it, unplug the power for 30 seconds, then still holding it, plug the power back in for 30 more seconds. Those were the instructions I got from the guy on the phone from Bangalore and it worked. The router was liberated, it went back to default settings. By the way, once I figured this all out, with much help, I did go back and liberated my neighbor's router and set it back to the original settings.



So, thanks Jeremy. I owe you big time.

I keep telling myself that all these things one has to learn are good for your brain. If it's true, my brain is really fit.

[I've noticed a few people googling to here and realized the instructions had been cut off so I've added them back in. 11/13/07]

Will Putting Individuals in Prison Change the System?

I'm still sorting through my thoughts on the corruption trials. I did talk to Rep. Sharon Cissna about it a couple of weeks ago. I asked her the question I'd like to ask all our legislators - "You must have known something was going on. Why didn't you do something about it? Ethan Berkowitz did, but what about the rest of you?"

She said that she and other Democrats did do things. They worked hard to keep the worst stuff out of various bills. But they were pretty much cut out of things. The Republican caucus would go off and meet and make all their decisions privately and the Dems would sit in the chambers because the Republicans would come suddenly and call for a vote. At the ending weeks of the session things work quickly and if the Minority are not right there, they lose what small power they have.

She said that there were many times when they spoke up and she even sent me a list of times to look up on the audio recordings of the session. But my Mac couldn't read what she'd sent and I got distracted. My fault. But rather than hold off, I decided to put this up now, especially after reading Saturday's ADN editorial about Tom Anderson's sentence.

Convicted former legislator Tom Anderson was a relatively small fish in Alaska's corruption scandal. He didn't deserve the harshest possible prison sentence. But his post-conviction display of contrition, and the long roster of support letters he produced, didn't justify the shortest possible sentence, either.

Given the range of prison time Anderson faced, federal Judge John Sedwick's sentence of five years is about right. It sends a strong message that those who get caught violating the public trust are going to pay a serious personal price.

Rep. Cissna's comment was that the system itself is the major problem. When she arrived, if I remember her right, her husband had just recently died. She showed up in Juneau and was surrounded by lobbyists fawning all over her. But given her husband recent death, she rejected their efforts to give her attention. The lobbyists very quickly left her alone. Besides, she was a Democrat without much power anyway.

But, she said, anyone who came to Juneau with ego issues was an easy target for the lobbyists. And with most people living away from home and often without their families, they didn't go back to their families at night, but rather were out for dinner and then the bars, often with lobbyists right there to pick up the tab.

She even commented on the ethics training that was mandatory for all legislators last January. What surprised her was how the workshop caused her to realize how she herself had been affected by the Juneau atmosphere. She heard grumbling made by some around her and comparing it to the ethics expert thought, "Yeah, I knew that was wrong, but I've been here long enough that my own standards of right and wrong have been blurred." She said other legislators felt that the consultant didn't really understand how things worked. (Michael Josephson specializes in state legislative ethics having studied the issue throughout the US, and he charged around $30,000 for the one day workshop.)

So I think the ADN is right. Tom Anderson was a small fish. We know that he wasn't even a target at first. But Bobrick and Prewitt, who had agreed to cooperate with the Prosecution in order to lessen their own sentences snagged him. Mind you, Anderson had had consulting stints with Veco where he got paid for not doing much at all, and at the Alaska Telephone Association where he was paid to read legislation about rural telephone service and do analysis on it, but had no work product at the end. Even his own attorney on the final day said that Tom Anderson really shouldn't have been a legislator - he needed money and the pay of a legislator wasn't going to meet those needs.

So, Tom Anderson will go to jail. Will that make a difference? Sure, in the short run people will be careful. But it won't last long if the system stays the same. Apparently the main part of the new ethics law that is having any effect is the limit of $15 meals someone can spend on a legislator.

And without the massive investigation including the video recording for nearly six months at the Baranof Hotel and the tens of thousands of phone calls monitored, there would be precious little evidence and we would probably know nothing.

The trials have revealed a lot and as I sort it out in my own head I'll post more.

Thoughts on the Alaska Political Corruption Trials - Part I Conflicts of Interest, Undue Gain, and Improper Influence

Most people who talk about ethics tell us that public officials and administrators must avoid ‘conflicts of interest.” This is the standard mantra. I’d argue that they CAN”T avoid such conflicts. They are built into being human. There is always the potential for a conflict between our personal and professional obligations. The key is what we do about the conflict. The main potential problems stemming from conflicts of interest are:

• Undue Gain
• Improper Influence

Undue gain is perhaps easier to understand if we talk about due gain first. This is what a public administrator or elected official receives in compensation for completing the job duties in the manner set out by contract, policy, law, etc. Generally it includes monetary payment (salary, per diem, etc.), benefits (health insurance, specified leave time, etc.), and possible benefits related to the job (minor use of a copier, tuition waiver for university employees, for example). Anything beyond that is UNDUE gain - extra payments or gifts to do the job one is already being paid for, special treatment of services (free tickets, meals, etc.)

Improper Influence is also easier to understand if we talk about proper influence. Normally, when an administrator makes a decision it is based on some set of decision rules. These could be specific criteria to get, say, a building permit. They could be based on a standard or procedure established for hiring new employees. There are also more general policies and procedures for how to spend money, and rules to prevent unlawful discrimination and privacy violations. Or they could be professional standards (for engineers, attorneys, or nurses, for example) or even unwritten, but known customary procedure. As you go higher up the organization, the decisions are less concerned with individual cases and more with general policy. Policy often takes one into unknown territory and there may not be specific guidelines on how to make decisions. But there will be procedural rules that, ideally, are intended to make the process open and fair. And there are basic management standards and techniques for anticipating and evaluating things like costs and benefits. Improper influence is when you take into considerations factors that are not in the sanctioned decision making criteria, such as whether taking a certain action will benefit oneself and/or one’s friends.

So if we look at the Anderson and Kott cases, we see in the bribery and extortion convictions, that they had undue gain - money and other benefits to do what they were already being paid for by their legislative salaries and per diem. There was also improper influence. The decisions they made were colored with more than the public interest and objective analysis of the issues; they also considered what their benefactors wanted them to do. And while both Kott and Anderson argued that these were decisions they would have made anyway, since they were consistent with their ideology, it is clear that they might not have pursued their positions with such zeal, and that they might have spent more time on other issues their constituents needed.

But it isn’t simply black and white. If a contractor who wants to do business with a government agency leaves a pen with the company’s name on it after a meeting, is that undue gain? If a law firm that does business with the Municipality of Anchorage sends a fruit basket to the Legal Department in December, is that going to lead to improper influence?

Here’s where we see how conflict of interest is a basic tension embedded in our culture (and most others.) Our personal lives are ruled by values of loyalty. Family and friends take priority over strangers. We give gifts and do favors that we freely exchange with people close to us. But when we go into public office, we are expected to make decisions based on the rule of law, on equal treatment to all (rich or poor, stranger or friend). So when people from our personal lives are also involved in our professional lives we have two different standards in conflict. But even strangers we come to know through our jobs should be treated politely and with respect - as people, not as objects. There are human decencies - exchanging pleasantries and doing minor favors - that we do naturally for people we come to know.

Those with an interest in specific governmental decisions take advantage of these impulses to be friendly and helpful. There was a great deal of testimony that Tom Anderson was a naturally friendly guy, eager to help out, to please. Lots of examples. His defense attorney argued that was all he was doing for Prewitt and Bobrick. Other legislators have told me, "I can't be bought for a $10 lunch." In fact they sound like they have been personally insulted when such actions are criticized. "I have to eat. This gives me a chance to talk to my constituents while I'm eating. I'm actually giving up my time." But if we stand back and look at it in terms of improper influence and undue gain, that answer doesn't hold up. If you have to eat, why not pay for your own lunch? Just say, "Fine, let's have lunch, but I pay my own way." If they pressure you or ridicule you, they are really testing your resolve and willingness to play ball. Even if the cost of the lunch doesn't have an effect on your action, the 90 minutes of private time to tell their side of the story, to give you their facts, in private, without someone with a different view their to challenge the accuracy of their facts may well influence your vote.

Of course my argument flies in the face of what's practical. Legislators must listen to constituents, usually in private. They also listen to proponents and opponents of various legislation well before the topic comes up in on the official public chamber. But these one sided conversations mean that legislators often only hear one side of an issue. One way to counter this is to have legislators imply publicly post their work calendars so all people can see how much time they've spent talking with whom. More work? Not too much. They pretty much have to keep a calendar anyway, and logging phone calls is good business practice, and caller id makes this easier to do. Perhaps no one would even look at the information. But at least it should be discussed with an open mind.

The point is to to have legislators themselves question business as usual, to look critically at "how we've always done it" against the dangers of undue gain and improper influence.


I'm going to try to write a series of posts looking at issues relating to understanding corruption using what has come out in the political corruption trials in Alaska. The theoretical framework is based on: Steven E. Aufrecht, “Balancing Tensions Between Personal and Public Obligations: Context for Public Ethics and Corruption” in Dwivedi, O.P. and J. Jabbra (2007) Public Administration In Transition: A Fifty-Year Trajectory Worldwide, Vallentine Mitchell Publishers

Chinese Blocks on Blogspot Gone?

I've started getting hits from China again in the last week or two. Does this mean that the blocks on blogspot in China are gone? I know that some Chinese bloggers had used proxy sites to get around the blocks. But I've had several know that came directly from China. This would be a very welcome change.


[It's late and I posted the above without even trying to see if there was anything official. And there is some confirmation:

China Blocks YouTube, Restores Flickr and Blogspot

China's Web viewers can no longer access YouTube, but Blogspot.com and Flickr photos are now available.

Steven Schwankert, IDG News Service

Thursday, October 18, 2007 8:00 AM PDT

Please Wait...

China watchers, get your scorecards out: Google Inc.'s YouTube is blocked, Wikipedia is still blocked, but, for the moment, Google blog site Blogspot.com is available and some pictures from Yahoo Inc.'s Flickr photos can once again be viewed.

China-based users accessing YouTube since Wednesday afternoon began receiving the dreaded "The server at www.youtube.com is taking too long to respond," the typical response when a user attempts to view a site that has been blocked.

Google's blog site, Blogspot, is currently available after being blocked in June. An unblocking of the site last year led to the availability of a Shanghai-based foreign blogger known as Chinabounder, whose blog recounted the author's sexual exploits with Chinese women while working as an English teacher. The posts ultimately led to an unsuccessful hunt for the author and a temporary closing of the blog. Google did not respond to a request for comment on YouTube's block and Blogspot's availability.

For the rest, go to PC World.]