Guilty plea for Kohring

ANCHORAGE — Former longtime state lawmaker Vic Kohring intends to change his plea to guilty this week, likely ending the years-long saga over allegations he took bribes from oil industry insiders.

According to a motion filed Monday, Kohring will plead guilty to one felony count of conspiracy to commit extortion and attempted extortion under color of official right and bribery.

Kohring is set to enter his plea Friday, followed immediately by his sentencing. He was elected to represent Wasilla as a Republican in the state House starting in 1994 and ultimately stepped down in 2007 to focus on his legal defense.

“The only sentencing issues which have not been agreed upon between the parties are the length of any period of supervised release and the conditions of supervised release,” according to a motion Kohring’s attorney filed.

It is unclear from the filings whether the parties have agreed to jail time or just a “supervised release” in which Kohring will likely have to check in with a parole officer and agree not to do certain things or risk returning to jail.

Kohring was convicted of bribery and extortion in 2007 at a trial in which jurors saw him accept cash from Bill Allen, then CEO of the now-defunct oilfield services company VECO. He was caught up in a wide-ranging state investigation that ensnared multiple lawmakers, many of whom have received prison time.

For his part, Kohring was convicted on three of the four counts of bribery and extortion with which he was charged. He was sentenced to three and a half years in prison and had served just over a year in a California penitentiary when word came down that his case had been overturned in the wake of misconduct on the part of prosecutors in the trial of the late U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens.

In a letter from prison to the Frontiersman, he wrote about an attempt he’d made to win a pardon from then-president George W. Bush.

“In hindsight, I’m glad I was not pardoned, frankly. I would much prefer to win my appeal, be granted a new trial and prove my innocence. Pardons are most frequently for excusing those who’ve committed crimes and have no other alternative. I have not committed a crime. Thus, in the long run, it will be better for me to go through the trial process again as difficult as it may be,” he wrote.

In a U.S. Appeals Court ruling issued at the time, a judge cited as reasons for overturning Kohring’s conviction allegations that prosecutors had withheld evidence of Allen’s unreliable memory, that he was being investigated for sexual misconduct with minors, that the money he and another VECO executive Rick Smith gave Kohring was a gift of friendship, that Smith was too friendly with an FBI agent investigating him and that a government witness thought Kohring wasn’t corrupt.

Kohring had long protested his innocence and, when he was released from prison, said that he would work hard to clear his name. Prior to his incarceration, he stopped to wave goodbye to constituents on his way to Anchorage to turn himself in to U.S. Marshals.

As the legal process wore on, Kohring seemed to have one tale of financial hardship after another, famously getting rides to court from his attorney and from friends, and once even hitchhiking into Anchorage to make an appearance.

Prosecutors had apparently been gearing up for trial, swapping motions with Kohring’s attorneys. Most recently, it was decided that the trial should proceed in Fairbanks in order to try and find a less tainted jury pool than Anchorage and that Bill Allen would testify for both the prosecution and the defense.

All of that is likely moot, now. And the saga may finally come to an end at Friday’s hearing.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.