Kohring trial should stay here

Today’s story about Vic Kohring is not the first time we’ve covered an accused criminal’s attempt to be tried someplace other than where the crime was allegedly committed.

Indeed, it’s not even the first time the Frontiersman has been cited in evidence presented as proof of why such a change-of-venue motion should be granted.

The murder trial of Frank Adams, convicted in March 2009 of beating his girlfriend to death near Chickaloon, began with a drawn-out examination of whether Frontiersman stories had hopelessly polluted the Valley’s pool of potential jurors.

We were somewhat chagrined when the seasoned judge hearing that case was proved correct in her opinion expressed to attorneys that the vast majority of potential jurors haven’t even heard of the defendant, let alone retained in their memories any facts about the case that would prevent them from being unbiased.

With Kohring, though, we think the case might be somewhat different.

In nearly every other change of venue story the Frontiersman has printed, prosecutors had done a very good job of shielding evidence from reporters’ prying eyes. Even the Adams trial cited above contained numerous pieces of evidence our reporter never knew existed at the time.

Police officers and district attorneys know there is a danger in putting too much of a case’s evidence out to the public. To avoid trouble picking a jury, they keep their cards close to their chests when dealing with reporters.

But Kohring’s first trial in 2007 trial had reporters in attendance every day. The videos played in evidence were released and played on newscasts. You can still find them online with relative ease.

And, as our colleagues in the media have pointed out repeatedly, for Kohring the video showing cash changing hands was the most damning piece of evidence.

That hidden camera in the Westmark Baranof Hotel recorded Kohring accepting cash from Bill Allen, at the time CEO of the oilfield services company VECO. Immediately afterward he asked Allen and another executive, Rick Smith, what he could do for them in the Legislature.

We’ve talked about that in this space before. Our exact words were: “if that’s not a bribe, we need to redefine the term.”

If that piece of evidence were to come only through Allen’s testimony and not through a video we might have doubted it. But it’s hard to doubt the tape. And it’s a tape that a wide swath of Alaska has seen, probably multiple times. And many of them concluded he was guilty, an opinion some of our neighbors have not been shy about expressing.

We understand why Kohring is asking that a different group of people — other than the Alaskans who elected him — be asked to decide his fate.

We hope, though, that his motion is not successful. We have enough trust in our neighbors to believe they are capable of setting what they think we know of his trial aside and looking at it with fresh eyes. It’s something rational adults do every day. And, despite what some would have you believe, Alaska has its share of rational adults.

We have argued before that Kohring should stand trial again to send a message that his type of behavior is not permissible in Alaska. We stand by that opinion, and we hope that trial is fairly conducted by both sides — in Alaska.