Alaska Employment Law

Judge Sedwick finds no inflammatory publicity, and notes lessened public interest in local news 

Judge John Sedwick has denied Victor Kohring’s motion to transfer his criminal trial to the Western District of Washington.  U. S. v. Kohring, 2007 WL 2949528 (D.Alaska Oct. 9, 2007).

Sedwick closely analyzes multiple newspaper and on-line reports concerning the Kohring and the VECO corruption scandal, and finds no inflammatory publicity.  He also notes that impartial juries were seated in the Kott and Anderson trials.

Sedwick concludes:

What emerges from an assessment of the media reports in their totality is a picture of factual, fair, and non-inflammatory reporting and commentary stained only here and there with an inflammatory remark or story which gives a glimpse of information that will not be admitted as evidence at trial. This is insufficient to support a finding of the requisite “huge wave of public passion” against Kohring.

Sedwick then makes this interesting observation about pre-trial publicity concerns in the current media environment:

The fact is that the public at large is simply not as attuned to local news as it was in an earlier era when Irwin was decided or when the news accounts were published which were considered in Daniels– the case was decided in 2005, but dealt with [media] reports from the early 1980s. To put it bluntly, a surprising number of prospective jurors are just not interested in, and do not follow, local news. Many don’t even read local newspapers. Many do not watch the local news on television. Among those who do read the newspaper, many simply glance at the local news headlines while moving on to areas of interest such as sports or gardening. Many who watch television are looking for entertainment programs, not local news. To be sure, there are still many citizens who seek to stay informed about local events, but the tacit assumption that there is nearly universal interest in local news which underpins cases like Irwin and Daniels is an increasingly questionable assumption. While this court is not, of course, free to ignore the teaching of cases like Irwin and Daniels, it does suggest that this court should be especially mindful of the admonition that prejudice may be presumed only in extreme cases where a community is literally saturated with inflammatory and prejudicial publicity.  That is not the situation with respect to the community from which Kohring’s jury will be drawn.

(Citation omitted.)