Judge dismisses indictment: District attorney has 30 days to re-indict Suzette Welton

ANCHORAGE -- An Anchorage Superior Court judge Monday dismissed an indictment against a Wasilla woman accused of burning down her home to collect on the life insurance policies of her teen-age sons.

Suzette Welton, 38, had been charged with murder and arson in connection with a Sept. 15, 2000 fire that resulted in the smoke-inhalation death of her 14-year-old son, Samuel, who perished in an upstairs bedroom of his mother's Mulchatna Drive duplex apartment. Another son, Jeremiah, then 16, was able to get out of the home by jumping to the ground from a second-story window. Welton and her 6-year-old daughter escaped uninjured.

Judge Milton Souter was asked to rule on more than 20 points raised by Welton's court-appointed defense attorneys. The attorneys claimed a Palmer grand jury returned an indictment in November 2000 after hearing what they claimed was insufficient and inadmissible information. Monday's proceedings also served as a hearing regarding evidence to be used at a February trial.

The dismissal of the grand jury indictment means the state needs to go back and present only the admissible evidence to a new grand jury panel. The Palmer District Attorney's office has 30 days to re-indict. Welton remains jailed at Hiland Mountain Correctional Facility in Eagle River.

Souter ruled that while sufficient evidence had been presented at grand jury, exculpatory evidence indicating Samuel Welton's state of mind should have been presented. He dismissed the indictment on the grounds that the state mistakenly presented false information that left Welton "without a chance."

Palmer Public Defender Greg Heath and Assistant Public Defender George Davenport persuaded Souter that the cumulative affect of prejudicial information painted what Heath had said was an "unbalanced picture to cast aspersions on (Welton's) character."

Souter ruled he did not agree insufficient evidence went before the grand jury, however, and that enough admissible evidence remains for a new grand jury to indict Welton.

Souter disagreed with defense attorneys on several of their other arguments for dismissal. He ruled it was appropriate that the jury heard Welton took out $100,000 life insurance polices on each of her two teen sons, and said he did not buy the notion that she had done so purely as investments for her sons -- as the defense attorneys had contended.

The judge ruled against the state presenting evidence about Welton having acted on 10 insurance claims between 1993 and 2000, on the grounds that some were with her husband and such information would prove highly prejudicial at trial.

But he sided with the defense on the issue of whether a previous sexual assault claim against Welton's husband should be used as evidence, stating it should not be because of its "lurid details and sexuality."

Palmer Assistant District Attorney Dave Berry argued the state needed to present this "false claim of rape" to show its place in the chain of events leading up to the fire.

Heath argued that "there was not enough there to link with motive or intent," and no charges were brought against Welton for making a false report. At issue was pubic hair Welton held in her hand after the alleged sexual assault -- hair that matched her former husband's. She claimed he had broken into her home and raped her, but the pubic hair was later found to be cut, not pulled, causing investigators to believe she faked the rape.

Souter agreed, but added that defense attorneys should not open up the issue at trial by allowing Welton to use a "previous assault" as part of her defense for sleeping on a downstairs couch the night the fire started, rather than in her bedroom upstairs -- where the fire occurred.

Welton sat handcuffed in court, wearing blue jail clothes throughout the day-long proceeding. She did not appear to make eye contact with her church supporters, her son Jeremiah or her former husband during the proceeding.

Attorneys for Welton also objected to information brought up at grand jury about a child-custody dispute between Welton and her former husband. Souter agreed that "specifics" about custody proceedings should be left out. Dennis and Suzette Welton had an ongoing dispute over custody of their three children.

Souter ruled that information about Welton's financial condition at the time of the arson would be admissible, overruling the defense's objections that this, too, was used to paint their client in a bad light. However, he tossed out a piece of evidence the prosecution had gathered to show Welton forged her husband's signature to sell his 1973 Bronco without his knowledge.

"What does this have to do with burning the house down?" Souter asked.

Defense attorneys particularly objected to testimony at grand jury about missing hand cranks on upstairs bedroom windows. An insurance investigator sifting through fire debris months after the fire found a hand crank, which indicated one had been near or on a window and that the state failed to provide clear evidence Suzette Welton had removed the cranks.

Souter ruled no error had been made in prosecutors presenting the information the state had at that point. Since the debris was located at an unsecured site, the crank could have been tossed on the heap at any point.

A final section of defense complaints dealt with how the state apparently did not use information that indicated another person, namely Samuel, could have set the fire. A personal computer used primarily by Jeremiah and Samuel was seized as evidence immediately after the fire.

Welton's two teens "lived on the computer," defense attorneys claimed, creating reams of transcripts on ICQ chat rooms. Many thousands of pages of information could have been accessed from that computer to show the kinds of discussion Samuel had with others on a variety of issues, including whether it would be better to die in a fire or another way, they said. Suzette Welton did not use the computer except perhaps once a month, defense attorneys claimed, yet she was depicted as having the technical computer expertise to back-date computer documents.

"This is like having a whole filing cabinet full of notebooks in (the state's) possession, yet they chose not to use it for whatever reason," Heath said.

Berry responded that he used Samuel's computer and other writings provided to the state from custody proceedings, and did not need the additional evidence at that point.

In his response to the defense motion to dismiss the indictment, filed earlier this month, Berry wrote that the state had a home computer from the Mulchatna Drive apartment at the time the grand jury convened -- just over a week after Suzette Welton's arrest -- but did not actually receive the chat room information gleaned from that computer until months later.

Palmer District Attorney Roman Kalytiak said the state would probably re-indict in three weeks, and plans to adhere to the previously scheduled Feb. 25 trial date. Another option would be to appeal the dismissal to a higher court.

"The down side is that puts the case on hold for probably another year. I disagree with the ruling, but that's not an attractive option," he said.