Nineteen years ago, an illegal hunting case involving shooting wolves from an aircraft, among other offenses, began a highly unusual campaign of some Alaskans to expose alleged judicial corruption.
FastCast morning digital headlines for Thursday, Feb. 29, 2024.ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Nineteen years ago, an illegal hunting case involving shooting wolves from an aircraft, among other offenses, began a highly unusual campaign by some Alaskans to expose alleged judicial corruption.
The latest chapter in the strange legal phenomenon arrived on Tuesday, when Third District Superior Court Judge Thomas A. Matthews dismissed a perjury charge against former District Court. The former judge’s Nov. 3, 2022, indictment stems from a 2005 unlawful hunting case that she presided over in McGrath, according to the dismissal. The defendant in that case, David Haeg, has since co-founded the Alaska Grand Juror’s Association which has staged protests against various entities of Alaska’s judicial branch for what they allege is statewide corruption. The grand jury’s investigation into Murphy’s alleged perjury was led by an independent prosecutor based on Haeg’s allegations of corruption. Matthew’s dismissal outlines Judge Murphy’s arguments which state that the indictment fails to specify her alleged false statement which is required under Alaska state law in criminal indictments. Murphy’s defense also states that the grand jury that indicted her lost its quorum when a grand juror left the state and refused to participate in further proceedings; she described it as “fatally defective.” Murphy also argued that the prosecutor gave the grand jury the wrong instructions regarding the proper standard of evidence because they were not given instructions for a criminal indictment. Her defense also states that the indictment fails a legal test that requires the court to set aside inadmissible evidence. In this case, Murphy argued that the evidence was “highly prejudicial” and included “multiple levels of hearsay, mostly involving Mr. Haeg’s baseless conjecture and self-serving recitations of fact, his own unchecked, unsophisticated, and unsupported legal conclusions.” The state’s prosecutor argued that the jurors were experienced and understood the criminal instructions for the indictment even though they weren’t given those instructions, according to Matthew’s dismissal. The opposition also stated that the court that accepted the grand jury return was aware of the unusual circumstance with the departed juror when it published the indictment, and argued that the indictment’s lack of specificity could be addressed by filing a “Bill of Particulars” that detail the alleged perjury. But Matthews’ dismissal states that with the “highly unusual nature of the grand jury proceeding in this case, it is impossible to subtract out the ‘improper evidence’ and conduct a traditional Stern test analysis and determine what’s left.” Matthew’s dismissal reports that Murphy contended that the grand jury also considered inadmissible evidence, such as an “information packet” distributed by Haeg that alleged widespread corruption and criminal conduct by numerous individuals involved in his various cases. At one point, the dismissal notes, a grand jury panel member had been approached — off the court’s record — by a group of picketers asking if the panel would hear their case.
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