Murder charges revived

PALMER — After their initial case collapsed under a judge’s ruling that tossed out a crucial confession, prosecutors have secured a second indictment for a man accused of slapping his young daughter to death in 2008.

Clayton Allison, 29, was re-indicted Feb. 1. The charges date back to September 2008, when Alaska State Troopers were dispatched to Allison’s home where the girl, 15-months old at the time, was badly injured. Initially, Allison told authorities she had fallen down the stairs while he was in the process of unclogging a toilet.

Eventually, though, he told investigators he’d been slapping the girl on the head in an attempt to get her to eat. The slaps got harder over time, eventually whipping the girl’s head back until it smacked her high chair.

But in July 2012, Superior Court Judge Vanessa White ruled that the confession he made to Wasilla Police Department Officer Rick Manrique and Alaska State Trooper Investigator Luis Nieves was inadmissible in court.

The reason? Officers continued to question Allison after he mentioned speaking with an attorney. White quotes the relevant portion of that interview in her ruling, where Allison is heard saying: “Would it be better for me, I-I’m scared. OK. Is- is- is- it OK to talk to you guys about it or … I guess what I’m saying is legally wise, is it better to talk to a lawyer about it first or is it better to talk to you guys about it first?”

Prior to that, Manrique had engaged in a “soliloquy,” White wrote, about how Allison would be judged if he didn’t set the record straight.

“The difference is whether we go forward and we can say, ‘hey, but you know what, he’s never been in trouble, he’s a decent guy, he said it just happened because he did X, Y, or Z and lost it, you had a momentary lapse in judgment,’” Manrique said in the interview, according to White. “All those things paint a much brighter picture for you than somebody who’s been a crack dealer and finally got around to the business of killing his kid.”

He told Allison that the medical evidence showed the girl had died in a homicide. He said that interviewing Allison was just “a formality” because police had all the evidence they needed from those medical experts.

White said that after Allison asked about an attorney, Manrique and Nieves should have stopped the interview and clarified what he meant by that. Was he asking to talk to an attorney or not?

But they didn’t, the judge said.

“That’s a decision for you to make son,” Manrique said, according to the transcripts White quotes. “If you want to talk to a lawyer, you’re certainly entitled to. That’s why we read you your rights initially. If you want to set the record straight here today, that’s entirely up to you as well.”

Allison asked what the benefit of setting the record straight in the interrogation room would be and Manrique replied: “Well, you can sit, when I say set the record straight is to paint a picture of yourself as an honest person, as someone who’s believable.”

In White’s view, that was where it all collapsed because Manrique should have asked Allison to clarify.

“When Officer Manrique chose instead to use Allison’s inquiry about an attorney as yet another opportunity to drive home his point that Allison was about to be judged more harshly if he did not ‘set the record straight immediately’ there was no longer any room for debate. Allison’s independent will evaporated and any vestigial voluntary quality to his interaction with the officers was lost,” White says in her ruling.

The confession came immediately after that exchange with Manrique. White ruled it was not a voluntary confession.

She also ruled that when Allison made further admissions to his family following that interview he was still not acting of his own free will.

“Allison’s disclosures to friends and family, although made in his own home, were not an exercise of his free will, but were instead the fruits of the tainted custodial interrogation.

With the confessions tossed, Allison’s attorney had enough grounds to get the indictment tossed, which happened just days after White tossed the confession.

But prosecutors chose not to drop the case, taking it to a grand jury this month. Allison is scheduled to make his first appearance in court since the re-indictment on Feb. 19.

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