Alaska attorney general nurtures right-wing demands for vigilante justice
There is truth to the idea that a grand jury can expose corruption in government when the powers that be are up to no good.
But without safeguards to preserve individual rights, a grand jury can quickly morph into an instrument of mob rule.
That’s what has happened on the Kenai Peninsula under Attorney General Tregarrick Taylor, who bowed to right-wing demands to cripple the role of prosecutors in a secret grand jury proceeding that became a “vigilante circus,” as the lawyer for the chief target of the runaway grand jury puts it.
Other circuses may follow, as the Dunleavy administration wants to spend $500,000 a year to hire a lawyer, a paralegal and an assistant to work with “investigative grand juries.”
The enthusiasm for investigative grand juries, unfettered by rules of evidence and restrictions that protect individuals from the power of the state, comes from those who never stop to think how a grand jury with no safeguards could be easily turned to destroy them instead of their political opponents.
There is always a question about just who is to decide what is investigated.
The specific injustice fostered by Taylor took place when he created a grand jury environment in Kenai that provided chronic complainer David Haeg with a starring role to advance his many personal grievances against enemies real and imagined.
Following his conviction of illegally shooting wolves in 2004 from a plane, Haeg has been tireless in claiming corruption, discovering it here, there and everywhere. He has had many days in court.
Haeg has accused his own attorneys, police, prosecutors, all members of the Alaska Supreme Court, as well as many other judges, district attorneys and others of crimes too numerous to mention. The list grows longer all the time.
He has lost three appeals to the Alaska Court of Appeals, the most recent in 2021. Those court decisions are known as Haeg 1, Haeg 2 and Haeg 3.
The first victim of Taylor’s negligence is retired District Court Judge Margaret Murphy, now subjected to what amounts to a state-sanctioned attack on her character and reputation from the Haeg grand jury in the form of a perjury indictment.
Haeg has long had a personal vendetta against Murphy, the retired judge who presided at Haeg’s trial in McGrath long ago.
The Haeg perjury indictment against Murphy, which doesn’t say what the alleged falsehood was, will never survive in court.
One of many fatal flaws is that there were only 11 grand jurors left when the indictment was signed April 28, 2023, not the 12 required by the Constitution. One of the jurors had left the state and said he wanted nothing more to do with this.
Haeg has been aided, not just by the attorney general, but also by a group of those with personal gripes about the government and right-wing politicians, including Kenai Rep. Ben Carpenter.
“I wanted to let you know that I spoke with the attorney general today,” Carpenter wrote Haeg on April 14, 2022. “I expect a grand jury will be convened by mid-May to consider your case.”
Carpenter wrote that John Skidmore, the deputy attorney general, was prohibited by Taylor from hearing their conversation.
Skidmore is one of the state officials high on Haeg’s lengthy enemies list.
“I also have a commitment from AG Taylor that he will ensure that you are informed about the process that will occur,” Carpenter told Haeg.
On May 3, 2022 Haeg wrote to Carpenter to complain that Carpenter was “wrong on nearly every count” about the grand jury.
Haeg told Carpenter he didn’t want anyone from the attorney general’s office connected to the grand jury at all.
“It will be We-the-People who presents our evidence to our grand jury,” Haeg wrote to Carpenter. “It will be our grand jury who investigates, not the very public officials and entities we want investigated.”
Haeg said one job for the “We-the-People” grand jury would be to decide if Skidmore and Kenai Judge Jennifer Wells should be indicted for jury tampering, “for ordering seated grand juries to stop investigating crime and corruption by public officials.”
In July 2022, Carpenter wrote on the chief right-wing Alaska political blog that the AG had changed state policy so that “No longer are prosecuting attorneys to behave as gatekeepers for what grand juries may investigate.”
Carpenter said the state should “sever any perceived supervisory relationships that may exist between prosecuting attorneys and the investigatory grand jury.”
Grand juries operate in secret, so it is difficult to get the full story of what happened and why.
Haeg’s alleged “Alaska Judicial Corruption Timeline” claims that the grand jury was convened by AG Taylor on July 26, 2022 to investigate “systemic judicial corruption in Alaska.” The grand jury did not have a quorum when it claimed to have indicted Murphy last spring.
The attorney general should have never allowed that bogus indictment to be filed in Superior Court.
The court documents filed in the perjury case, which I will review in later blog posts, demonstrate a pattern of neglience by the state. These documents also illustrate that the course chosen by the attorney general is a dangerous one for Alaskans and a serious threat to justice.
Here are the key documents:
Here is the indictment that doesn’t specify what alleged false statement was made.
Here is the defendant’s motion to dismiss the indictment.
Here is the prosecution’s opposition to the motion to dismiss the indictment.
Here is the defendant’s response to the state claims opposing dismissal.
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