JSD offices (left) were evacuated. Harborview Elementary School was not. Juneau School District offices were evacuated early Wednesday afternoon after an employee opened an envelope containing a suspicious white powder.
Juneau Fire Marshal Dan Jager says the envelope was in the day’s mail that had been delivered to the facility at the corner of 12th and Glacier.
The Capital City Fire and Rescue hazardous-materials team was in the building this afternoon.
“We have the haz-mat team that is inside collecting it for evidence,” Jager says. “We’re going to send that to the state crime lab to verify if the power is anything or not.”
Jager says it will take at least a day or two to get the results from the crime lab in Anchorage. “So our plan from here is to take it, package it, take it to the airport and have it Gold Streaked up, so they get it as soon as possible,” he says.
School district spokeswoman Kristin Bartlett says many employees went home around noon and the rest were evacuated about 2:15 p.m. She says district employees will return to work Thursday morning, but the room where the envelope was opened will stay quarantined until the white powder is identified.
Fire marshal Jager says the Juneau haz-mat team also has been called to Thorne Bay, where a white powder was received in the mail.
Lieutenant Lance Leone is a U.S. Coast Guard aviator, and the sole survivor of a 2010 helicopter crash that killed three people from Air Station Sitka. He was facing charges of negligent homicide and destruction of government property.
According to Leone’s attorney, John Smith, Rear Adm. Thomas Ostebo decided not to send the charges on to court martial.
Smith says while it’s the end of the charges, it’s the beginning of a new chapter for Leone.
“Probably one of the most difficult things he’s going to have to do is to be able to do that thing that he loves to do again,” Smith said. “It’s been quite a while since he’s flown or piloted an aircraft, and I’m hoping that he is going to be able to go to retraining soon, pass that retraining, and look forward to a new assignment in the Coast Guard, flying and rescuing people in accordance with the Coast Guard mission.”
Smith said Ostebo’s decision, and the outcome of the charges against his client, serve as encouragement for the members of all military branches that the military’s system of justice works.
Smith says Leone is ecstatic about dismissal of the charges. He talked more about the case in this interview with KTOO on Tuesday afternoon.
The state Division of Elections has turned down a challenge of President Barack Obama’s qualifications to be on the election ballot in Alaska. The challenge was filed by a Juneau resident who says the Democratic candidate is not qualified to run for re-election because he’s of mixed race.
It’s not a lawsuit filed in any court. Actually, it’s what’s called a nomination petition objection that was filed directly with the Division of Elections.
Division director Gail Fenumiai referred the objection to election attorneys within the Department of Law for further review.
“This is first time that we’ve received something like this,” says Fenumiai.
Gordon Warren Epperly is a retired bus driver in Juneau. He challenges Barack Obama’s qualifications to be on the ballot during Alaska’s presidential primary and general election. He says that Orly Taitz and others who’ve challenged Obama’s qualifications of being a ‘natural born citizen’ because of an alleged birth outside of the country went at it all wrong. He says there is no real requirement for a candidate to produce a birth certificate.
Epperly declined to talk on tape for this story. But in his filing he references the infamous Dred Scott decision which he says has never been overturned by the Supreme Court. He says Negros or Mulattos (he pronounces it mull-EYE-ttos) were not eligible to be citizens until the Fourteen Amendment was ratified in 1868. Even then, what Epperly calls ‘purported’ ratification of the amendment only allowed for civil rights, not political rights that allowed them and their descendants to hold federal office.
“That was the distinction that white supremacists in the South after the Civil War used in order to create the system of segregation that took root by the turn of the century,” says David Noon, associate professor of history at the University of Alaska-Southeast. He says Epperly’s assertion hinges on a very dubious reading of citizenship law.
“They argued that it was perfectly constitutional for states to take extraordinary measures to deny blacks the right to vote and serve office,” says Noon.
Noon’s specialty is race relations, identity, and politics in American History. He says calling into question the legitimacy of the Fourteenth Amendment, as ratified by post-Civil War readmitted states, is also a familiar idea of white supremacists.
“Those state governments didn’t have any legitimacy because they did things like abolish slavery or they created civil rights law that explicitly gave African-Americans and freed people all the rights that white citizens enjoyed in those states,” says Noon as he recounted their arguments.
Epperly confirms that under the same logic, women should not have been allowed to run for federal office since the Nineteenth Amendment was passed in 1920. In fact, he also challenged Lisa Murkowski’s run for U.S. Senate in 2010.
Epperly says he’s got some calls and has been called a racist. He also admits a few mistakes in the filing. One was including the term ‘mulatto’ to describe Obama’s mixed-race heritage. He says he didn’t know it was a derogatory term. He also says he wrote an apology for any disruption caused at the Division of Elections. Another mistake was noting his residence as a very popular horse farm in the Juneau area. But Epperly says he’s not the owner or operator. He’s simply an in-law that lives in a nearby building. The farm’s actual owners have disavowed any association with Epperly’s filing.
The filing has virtually been ignored by the mainstream media. Although, some left-leaning blogs and news sites, and other satirical websites that mock the news have already highlighted it.
Elections director Gail Fenumiai says they really don’t have any jurisdiction or governance over the way the candidates are selected at the national level. There is no presidential primary election in Alaska. And, the state cannot intervene in each party’s selection process for national executive office following party conventions.
“The past history of the Division (of Elections) is to accept the form that comes from the Democratic National Committee and Republican National Committee as submitted.”
As long as that Certification of Nomination arrives this summer, then the currently-presumed candidates of Barack Obama and Joe Biden will appear on this November’s ballot in Alaska.
Fourteen attorneys are in line to be the next Alaska Supreme Court justice.
Morgan Christen has already departed the state’s highest court after being appointed to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
The pool of applicants includes some familiar names in Alaska law and the courts. They include private attorneys Kevin Clarkson of Anchorage, Andy Harrington of Fairbanks, Daniel Westerburg of Homer, and Marc Wilhelm of Anchorage. Also applying are Anchorage attorneys William Callow, Peter Maasen, and Don McClintock.
Some of the notable judges who’ve applied include Charles Huguelet of Kenai, Michael McDonald of Fairbanks, Frank Pfiffner of Anchorage, Eric Smith of Palmer, and Joel Bolger, formerly of Valdez and Kodiak and now on the Alaska Court of Appeals. Also applying are administrative law judges Jeffery Friedman and Terry Thurbon.
Public hearing dates have not been set yet. But typically the Alaska Judicial Council will investigate the background of all the applicants, survey Bar members, and then interview each applicant.
Once at least two nominees are selected by the council, the Governor will have 45-days to make an appointment.
Supreme Court Chief Justice Walter Carpeneti announced on Wednesday that recently-retired justices Warren Matthews and Robert Eastaugh have volunteered to help hear cases as justices pro tem until an appointment is made.
Robert Dean Kowalski’s attorney entered a plea of ‘not guilty’ in Juneau Superior Court on Friday.
The 50-year old Montana inmate is being charged with first and second degree murder in connection with the death of his girlfriend in Yakutat over fifteen years ago. A jury trial is currently set for May 29th. But that date may get moved until later in the year because of the amount of evidence, a packed court calendar, and Kowalski already serving a sentence for a separate case in Montana.
Troopers believe that Kowalski stayed with 39-year old Sandra M. Perry at Yakutat’s Glacier Bear Lodge in July, 1996.
Troopers say that a man staying in the next room at the lodge reported hearing an argument, then a gunshot, followed by silence. Kowalski told Troopers that he armed himself with a shotgun after he and Perry heard a bear outside their room. But Kowalski said he tripped onto the bed and fell on top of Perry and the gun discharged when he got up.
Kowalski was never charged for Perry’s death. The prosecutor assigned to the case apparently determined that there was not enough evidence then to disprove Kowalski’s claim of an accidental shooting.
The Alaska Bureau of Investigation’s Cold Case Unit reviewed the Yakutat incident after Kowalski was convicted in Montana of killing another girlfriend there, 45-year-old Lorraine Kay Morin in March of 2008. The Kalispell Daily Inter Lake newspaper in Montana reported that the incident included the arrest of Kowalski after a 31-hour standoff at his home that involved SWAT teams from three jurisdictions. The gun used in the shooting was recovered from his home. Kowalski told investigators the gun accidentally went off as he was falling backward into a chair.
Kowalski’s bail was maintained at $1,000,000.
Public defender Eric Hedland has been initially assigned to the case.
The Alaska Court of Appeals has upheld a sentence for a Juneau man convicted for abducting and sexually assaulting a 15-year old girl.
Christopher Allen Scholes was sentenced to 70-years in prison for the crime that occurred in December 2008. Thirty-years out of the composite sentence was suspended.
Scholes’ defense argued before the Court of Appeals that it was excessive. That was partly based on Scholes’ prospects for eventual rehabilitation and his failure to take medication for his bipolar disorder before the crime was committed.
Superior Court Judge Pallenberg said during a sentencing hearing that it was a “horrible, brutal, savage attack,” and the “circumstances (of the crime) don’t justify it or excuse it.”
The composite sentence was a bit more than what prosecutors wanted, but it had more suspended time.
The victim’s parents said it wasn’t harsh enough. Her father called it a “Twinkie Defense,” noting that thousands of people with bipolar disorder don’t go around kidnapping and assaulting girls.
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