AUDIE HOLLOWAY SAYS,"I DON’T HAVE AN EXCUSE. IT’S JUST THE WAY IT IS"…AND THEN THE ILLOGICAL EXCUSES START TO FLY.

First of all let me start out by saying there are some good Alaska State Troopers, I know of two who are ethical and there are some corrections officers at the prisons who do their jobs without harming the prisoners. Unfortunately the problem in both of these systems and at the Department of Law is the leadership, dishonesty, poor training, agendas other than the work at hand, and incompetence.

From the ADN:

Alaska State Troopers say they have mishandled the investigation into the beating death of prison inmate John Carlin III, the alleged co-conspirator with Mechele Linehan in the 1996 Kent Leppink murder. They have vowed to move forward with the case and file charges.

I think I can provide some insight into that. First of all they try to keep incidents in the prisons unreported and this means they are not dealt with. That is one of the reasons they disappear grievances and punish those who file them. Those who speak up about any kinds of problems end up in segregation with their privileges to communicate decreased. In my case a parole officer kept them from putting me in administrative segregation, recommending I go to open population, so they kept me in an orientation unit where they could harass me and limit my ability to communicate with the outside. The reasons they do this is the Department of Corrections has no respect whatsoever for the rights of prisoners. They have a lot of corrections officers who are abusive to inmates. They violate their own policies. This is all due to poor leadership.

This lack of investigation into the murder of Carlin was a cover up and the State Troopers were enlisted to assist them. Think about it, ethics would dictate filing charges and prosecuting the crime to a person who is actually dedicated to upholding the law. What happened? Did they need enough time to get to some of the witnesses, change the paperwork, or alter any videos? Better take a close look at the DOC if you really want to understand how this happened, but let's not forget the DOL. Were they contacted by the DOJ about not investigating this case?

When I was wrongfully imprisoned there were many things done to endanger me. They put me in a cell with a violent psychotic woman in the mental health unit. I told them it was a dangerous situation and they simply told me to shut up. Fortunately I had been a psychiatric nurse in the past and had some skills to deal with her. The staff was hoping she would harm me, that is why she was in my cell, and that is why they did not respond when they clearly heard her yelling while pounding the door and walls by kicking or hitting them with her fists. It also was not a coincidence that we were in the last cell on the end while the night nurse was not even in the unit. She stayed in the room across the hall where she would not hear me yelling for help, I assume she was sleeping. This woman who should have been a patient in a psychiatric hospital and not in a prison was attacking a hallucination that she was angry with, if she had turned her anger on me there is no telling what would have happened.

"We are trying to find out why we dropped the ball on it," said Col. Audie Holloway, head of the troopers. "It's unacceptable that this thing has taken this long."



Carlin, 51, was killed at the state's Spring Creek Correctional Center in October 2008. Troopers have released little information other than to say another inmate or multiple inmates attacked him and that he died from some sort of blunt-force trauma. It was the third severe beating to Carlin since he arrived at the Seward prison just months before to begin his 99-year sentence for murdering Leppink.
 
 Are we supposed to buy the dumb guy routine that Holloway just now noticed the ball was dropped on this case. Does the state of Alaska want a leader who has no clue why they do what they do in charge of the state troopers? Of course, the truth is he knows exactly why they dropped the ball. Dropping the ball is SOP at the Alaska State Troopers. This was the third beating of John Carlin. Considering what I know about how corrupt prisons operate, it is entirely possible one or more corrections officers were paid off to allow him to be beaten by simply looking the other way, and they may have thought it was funny. If that is the case we will never be allowed to have that information. The DOC staff knew full well he was in danger and did nothing to protect him. What did Carlin know that someone wanted him dead? One thing that is immensely clear is corrections officers not taking action to prevent someone from being beaten to the point of ignoring his requests for protection and allowing him to be beaten three times is a sign of severe problems at the DOC.

To protect him would have been simple, they love to put people in segregation in the prison system, why not segregate a guy whose life was in danger. They certainly tried to put me in segregation due to my writing multiple grievances about lack of health care and complaining about being blocked from going to the law library. They also love to transfer people. They moved me to four different jails and prisons to torture me, each time telling me I was going to Nome for a hearing. I guess they just do the opposite of what the inmate needs as another harming tactic.

Troopers investigate crimes committed in prison. For one and a half years troopers have been saying that Carlin's death is an ongoing investigation and that evidence such as lab results was still being processed.

Give us all a break. There was NO ongoing investigation. They were trying to figure out how to present the case with false evidence to cover the DOC’s ass. The DOJ needs to step in and find out what is going on here, just like they have done in other places such as New Orleans. One of the tactics employed by the DOL is to drag cases out for many reasons, one of them is to give themselves time to construct a fantasy story they think the public will buy into.

I had two men accuse me of a crime I did not do, the state troopers found no evidence I did it, yet a warrant was issued for my arrest out of Nome(I was in Homer). The truth is it was done for retaliation and to cover crimes they had committed. The DOL was thrilled due to being pissed off at me for demanding due process. The DOL is the agency whose primary purpose under Sarah Palin was to protect her from the consequences of her illegal and corrupt behavior. The main state trooper in that case is an honest law enforcement officer, but his supervisors and many coworkers are unethical(Anchor Point). I had already contacted the state troopers about several crimes they did not investigate, including theft, vandalism, methamphetamines, underage girls drinking and sleeping with adult males, insurance fraud, threats to myself, child endangerment, my wallet being stolen, and much more. They simply refused to do their jobs with a great deal of excusifying all the way up the chain of command. They told me I was not allowed to file a police report twice, stating they decide if one is filed or not. I had one lie to me and state that giving false information to law enforcement is not illegal. His supervisor called me a liar when I told him about it and I told him to listen to the phone recording of it. They refused to charge the man who stole my property and harmed my cat with any crimes. I had a court order to go get what was left of my property where it was stolen and a state trooper not only blocked me from getting it, but threatened to arrest me when I complained that what he was doing was wrong. Audie Holloway is well aware of all of this and did nothing, but ignore me. Oh, I guess his statement today shows that is one of his best skills, but he isn't sure why he does it, "that is just the way it is". This is law enforcement in Alaska. This is law enforcement on the Kenai Peninsula, they see their job as only responding to business owner’s complaints and ignoring citizen complaints They always side with business owners, even when they are clearly wrong.

Holloway confirmed that troopers have been waiting on DNA evidence in the case. He explained that because of the backlog in DNA sampling at the crime lab, troopers and district attorneys constantly prioritize what gets processed. "For some reason we didn't do that as well in this case, or as well as we should have," he said. "Whether we didn't put enough emphasis on it to the D.A., or the D.A. didn't put enough emphasis on it to the lab."



He said he was trying to find out where the miscommunication occurred.


"I don't have an excuse. It's just the way it is," he said.

It’s the excuse that isn’t an excuse. It’s all about lack of emphasis, “for some reason we didn‘t do that as well in this case“. I have a theory you might want to look into Holloway, you didn’t want to do your job and investigate this case just like you have done in other cases. I think Alaskan’s are owed an explanation as to why the state troopers are not doing their job in cases like this murder or my case. Audie Holloway called me a liar when I tried to get them to investigate my case and he hung up on me. That is a pattern that is common I found out among Alaska state officials when confronted with the truth.

Holloway said the case was not deliberately shoved aside because the victim was a convicted murderer -- a sentiment expressed by some of Carlin's supporters.

He is choosing the incompetence excuse, another typical tactic to hide misconduct in Alaskan state agencies.

"That's not the case," the colonel said. "But certainly the fact that the suspects are in jail does have some play to it, because we have people who are not in jail who should be in jail."

Yes, the fact that he was in jail did have some play. They treat inmates as if they do not matter. Their health concerns and threats against them are ignored. They consider inmates to be less than human. This is why there are so many human rights violations in the prisons in Alaska. Stating this happened because others who should be in jail are not in jail is just an attempt to come up with some kind of explanation when it is clear they simply did not investigate this case because they had some agenda not to.

"But that shouldn't play that much into it," he said.


Carlin's son, John Carlin IV, is suing the state Department of Corrections over the death. "I'm anxiously awaiting justice. I desperately want to finally find out what happened to my father," he said Monday.

I doubt he will ever find out the whole truth.


The younger Carlin filed the civil lawsuit in February. No trial date has been set. He is seeking at least $500,000 in damages.


"Due to the repeated nature of the assaults and Carlin's pleas for help, the officers and/or employees and/or agents of defendants knew or should have known of the danger to Carlin's personal safety," the lawsuit says.

Three correctional officers are named as defendants in the lawsuit: John Cox, Andrew Houser and Jody Letter. Probation officer Clifton Simons is also a [sic] named. But their roles in what happened are not clear in the court filings. Efforts to reach them and their lawyers were unsuccessful.

Why are these people who ignored requests of a man whose life was threatened and allowed him to be murdered still working in the prison system? Why…because this behavior is how they normally conduct business. If they fired everyone who participated in unethical behavior there would only be a few officers left.

The lawsuit says Carlin tried to seek help from prison officials. He asked to be separated from the attackers or moved to another prison, it says.


One prisoner who claims responsibility for the first attack, Donald Joseph, has said that he beat Carlin to teach him a lesson about respecting Natives. Carlin had turned a TV channel while several Native inmates were watching, Joseph said.

It would be interesting to know about any exchanges between Joseph and corrections officers.

The Department of Corrections would not comment because of the ongoing litigation, a spokesman said.


Both Carlin and Linehan said they didn't kill Leppink. Prosecutors say Linehan coaxed Carlin to shoot Leppink so she could collect on the victim's life insurance policy. The Alaska Court of Appeals tossed out Linehan's conviction this year because some evidence was improperly presented to jurors, but prosecutors plan to try her again.

The Alaska Supreme Court is considering whether to invalidate Carlin's guilty verdict because he's dead and his appeal was pending when he died.


State prosecutors want it upheld. They have a strong incentive. If it is overturned, they may not be able to use their theory that Linehan persuaded Carlin to do the shooting.

Not only that, but this case may be set to expose the DOL system of railroading defendants into prison with lies. What did Carlin know? What does Commissioner of Public Safety Joseph A. Masters have to say about this? He has been almost invisible.