Kohring to get no new jail time

ANCHORAGE — Vic Kohring will admit he knowingly took a bribe and will end his years-long legal saga with no additional jail time to serve, according to documents filed in federal court Wednesday.

“I took this money intending to be rewarded and knowing and understanding why Bill Allen was giving it to me,” Kohring writes in an admission of guilt he hammered out with prosecutors. “By accepting this money with that knowledge and intent, I knowingly became a part of a conspiracy to bribe elected officials.

The bribe in question was $1,000 Kohring got from Allen, then CEO of the now-defunct oilfield services company VECO, at a bar in Douglas in 2006.

Kohring is set to enter his plea Friday, followed immediately by his sentencing. He represented Wasilla as a Republican in the state House from 1994 until he eventually stepped down in 2007 to focus on his legal defense.

He was convicted of bribery and extortion in 2007 at a trial in which jurors saw a video of him receiving a different alleged bribe from Allen. His was just one case in a wide-ranging state investigation that ensnared multiple lawmakers, many of whom have received prison time.

According to his admission of guilt, another VECO executive, Rick Smith, taking into account Kohring’s staunch anti-tax sentiments, told him “not to go ‘crazy’ or ‘wacko’” as the state debated how to tax petroleum profits as part of a deal to build a natural gas pipeline in the state.

According to the plea agreement, Kohring and prosecutors have agreed that he “shall be sentenced to the time he has already served in prison.”

That would be 11 months and 13 days. The only thing set to be determined at today’s hearing is how long Kohring will remain on federal probation. He won’t have to pay a fine and might not be able to receive any federal benefits like grants, food stamps or welfare. As a felon, he’s probably also going to lose his right to possess guns, vote, hold public office and sit on a jury.

In a pre-sentencing filing, prosecutors wrote that Kohring is ready to accept responsibility for what he did.

“His career as a legislator is long over. His felony conviction and the time he has already served in jail, in addition to the long period he has spent under court supervision, will deter not only Kohring, but others from engaging in such conduct in the future,” prosecutors wrote.

The state is requesting three years of probation for Kohring. A judge will weigh that against whatever Kohring’s attorney asks for in deciding the probationary period. Though it would be unusual for the judge to refuse, judges don’t have to accept plea agreements. And Kohring has the right to back out if the judge balks.

After the 2007 trial, he was sentenced to three and a half years in prison. His conviction was eventually overturned in the wake of misconduct on the part of prosecutors in the trial of the late U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens.

Kohring’s admission of guilt comes at the tail end of years of protesting his innocence and, when he was released from prison, said that he would work hard to clear his name.

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