Alaska News

Pete Kott to change plea in federal bribery charge

A little less than two months before Pete Kott is to stand trial -- again -- on federal corruption charges, Alaska's former Speaker of the House has given notice that he intends to change his not guilty plea in a bribery charge, one of the four federal charges he is facing. In court filings, the one-sentence notice makes no mention of Kott's intentions regarding the other three counts -- conspiracy to commit extortion, extortion, and wire fraud. Kott won the right to a retrial in 2009 after it was discovered government attorneys withheld evidence helpful to his case, and has been free for more than two years.

"I'm just trying to bring finality to this whole thing. It's been five years," Kott said in an interview Thursday afternoon.

In 2007, a jury found Kott guilty of conspiracy, extortion and bribery. Kott's attorney at the time, pushing for a lenient sentence, argued Kott was not a typical bribe-taker and that his acceptance of money from Bill Allen, a wealthy oil man, was done to benefit not himself but his son. By the summer of 2009, Kott was in the middle of serving his six year sentence when the Justice Department, confronted with its own errors, asked that Kott be released pending a review of the case. Soon thereafter an appeals court overturned the convictions and Kott won the right to a new trial.

But with Kott's mid-sentence victory came new risks. Although the conduct of prosecutors and FBI agents had been called into question and the reputation of Allen, the key witness in the case, had disintegrated, there is no way to know who would win round two. With Kott having already spent time in jail, chances are he has little desire to return. No matter how righteous a defendant may feel his fight to be, defense attorneys must always weigh the risk of pushing for a win against the chances their client could lose the case.

Kott's attorney, Sheryl Gordon McCloud, did not return calls seeking comment about the change in her client's strategy. The U.S. Attorney's Office in Anchorage also did not immediately return a call.

Kott said this chapter in his life -- the arrest, the first trial, the incarceration, the appeal, the upcoming retrial -- has been tough on him and his family. "Maybe it's just time to put it behind me and move forward in life regardless of what (I) think the outcome should be," he said when asked if his intent to change his plea meant he was actually guilty of the crimes he's accused of.

Kott and his attorneys have worked long and hard to expose what they perceive as severe miscarriages of justice at the hands of a prosecutorial team that withheld evidence and a government witness who may have had more to lose than first known. Allegations have long festered that Allen -- accused of bribing Kott to keep oil taxes low on the oil industry -- had a habit of hiring underage prostitutes, and that his decision to cooperate in the corruption cases effectively put an end to any potential sexual abuse investigation, an accusation U.S. attorneys have denied.

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Preparing to change his plea is not the position Kott hoped to find himself in, although now that he finds himself there he hopes it will come to an end without having to go back to jail. Generally, a notice to change plea is the first step in the process of negotiating a plea deal, and nothing is final until a judge signs off on it.

For Kott, the decision comes down to balancing battle fatigue against his desire to beat a government team of lawyers he feels didn't give him a fair shake. And his energy for one quest over the other has been in constant flux. "I've been like a windshield wiper on a car -- back and forth," he said.

Like Kott, and for the same reasons, former Wasilla lawmaker Vic Kohring also won the right to a retrial. His is scheduled to begin Oct. 31. The men were among a total of 12 lawmakers, lobbyists and businessmen caught in a long-running investigation into political corruption in Alaska. The most high-profile of the cases was the one involving the late U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens, whose successful post-trial appeal not only led to the dismissal of his own case but paved the way for Kott and Kohring to get relief.

Contact Jill Burke at jill(at)alaskadispatch.com

Jill Burke

Jill Burke is a former writer and columnist for Alaska Dispatch News.

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