There should be no misinterpretation of right and wrong

We at the Frontiersman, and we assume many of our readers, have lately been talking a lot about something we hadn’t thought seriously about for at least a year — the public corruption trial of Vic Kohring.

On Friday, a federal appeals court overturned Kohring’s bribery and extortion convictions. Kohring is in limbo now. When a court took similar action in the case of the late U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens, the government decided not to try the case a second time. There are some who say the same should happen in Kohring’s case.

We are not among them.

It’s a position we take with a good deal of hesitation. We understand Kohring has suffered greatly as a result of this case. Not a rich man when he was a legislator, he’s lately been all but penniless. He’s served time in prison — not his full sentence, but prison time nonetheless. Maybe he’s suffered enough. Why not let him off the hook?

We can think of one reason, and a very good reason at that — without a conviction there will be no firm statement from the government that what Kohring did was not OK.

Indeed, if a jury finds him guilty once more and if the judge decides his sentence would be equivalent to time already served, we would be satisfied.

Intelligent minds, we are aware, can disagree as to whether Kohring is guilty of the crimes for which he is accused. The main argument seems to be the same one he made at trial — that Kohring was accepting a gift from a friend rather than a bribe from a powerful oil company executive.

We firmly believe that’s a misinterpretation of the facts. The recording of him in VECO executive Bill Allen’s suite in that Juneau hotel clearly shows Kohring accepting a wad of cash from Allen and another executive, Rick Smith.

The most telling piece of the exchange comes immediately after, when Kohring asks Smith and Allen what he can do for them. Not what he can do for them as friends. He’s not asking if they need their dry cleaning picked up or their dogs walked. Kohring asks what he can do for them in the Legislature.

If that’s not a bribe, we need to redefine the term.

But even if Kohring thought what he was doing was above board, we would argue that this is only because he didn’t step back long enough to consider the way it would appear to an outsider.

Had he stopped long enough to ask himself, “do I want to see this transaction on the front page of the newspaper or broadcast on the evening news?” he probably wouldn’t have done it.

It’s a good question for anyone in a position of public trust, be they the head of a local senior citizen’s organization or the general manager of the Valley’s electrical utility: “Do I want what I’m doing here broadcast to the masses?”

If the answer is “no,” it’s not because someone might misinterpret things. It’s because what you’re doing is wrong.