Initiative 1639 is not the only threat to your Second Amendment rights on the November 6 ballot. The Jefferson County Board of County Commissioners is joining the effort to keep you from exercising your constitutional rights. The voters’ decision on who should fill the open District 3 seat on the Commission now looms large in the future of gun rights in Jefferson County.
I-1639 is the initiative that would invade your medical privacy if you buy a handgun or semi-automatic rifle; collect enough data to populate a federally-prohibited registry of gun owners; and subject lawful gun owners to prosecution if their gun is stolen and used in a crime, among other affronts to your liberties.
What Jefferson county commissioners are doing is more subtle and reflects an emerging tactic among anti-Second Amendment government bodies. Politicians in most jurisdictions know that being honest about wanting to take away people’s guns and their right to use them is a recipe for political disaster. To work around this inconvenient truth, liberal politicians manipulate the regulatory process by writing laws designed to chip away at your gun rights.
The mechanism for this is a new ordinance to re-write existing county laws pertaining to shooting ranges. Judging by the language of the ordinance, it would appear the new and onerous regulations contained in this 38-page dictum are designed for one thing: to make it too expensive and too burdensome to operate a shooting range in Jefferson County.
This ordinance creates new, complex and costly barriers to exercising rights under the Second Amendment. Commissioner David Sullivan claims the ordinance is, “based on health and safety issues that have been cited at gun facilities,” the largest and best known being the range operated by the Jefferson County Sportsmen Association.
But a careful read of the ordinance betrays the motives of Sullivan and others. Modeled after a similar piece of anti-gun legislation in Kitsap County, the draft language for Jefferson County explicitly states that, “Kitsap County has passed a commercial shooting facility ordinance that withstood legal challenge.” In other words, they think they found a way to limit your gun rights and get away with it.
The ordinance also attempts to indict the Sportsmen Association and the range it has operated for more than half a century. It reads, “bullets striking a residence on November 22, 2017 near the commercial shooting facility located at 112 Gun Club Rd., Port Townsend, WA 98368 on land owned by Jefferson County but operated by Jefferson County Sportsmen’s Association called to question the safety of commercial shooting facilities.”
The deceit is revealed by the ordinance eventually acknowledging the truth that, “it was ultimately determined the damage was likely not caused by the shooting facility operated by Jefferson County Sportsmen’s Association.” The entire ordinance is based on a false premise.
The Sportsmen Association is not run by One-Percenters who fund anti-gun agitators from their offices in New York. It’s about 1,100 individuals and families who pay annual dues that are lower than my monthly PUD bill. By all accounts, this group of private citizens has been a good neighbor over the past 52 years, and operates its facility in a safe and environmentally responsible manner. But the new bureaucracy, permitting demands, inspections and surveying requirements of the ordinance aren’t cheap. We’re talking about tens of thousands of dollars that groups like the Sportsmen Association simply do not have.
Meanwhile, a lot of complaints are from people who moved near the range after it opened in the early 1960s and now gripe about hearing guns. It’s like wanting to shut down the Port Townsend mill because you bought a house near it and it smells funny when the wind blows the wrong way.
This is how liberal government works. They create new law that could put a shooting range out of business. This means law abiding gun owners of Jefferson County are denied the best and biggest facility of its kind on the peninsula. Combine this loss of a long-established range with the raft of “no shooting” zones ordered by the ordinance, and people are left with virtually no nearby place to legally practice and improve their gun safety skills. Your ability to lawfully exercise your constitutional rights is diminished.
The current board wants an incremental stealth form of gun control. What will the future 2019 Board of Commissioners do? The November 6 election to fill Kathleen Kler’s open seat will determine whether Jefferson County is governed by commissioners who are unanimously opposed to your constitutional rights. Democrat Greg Brotherton has already indicated he doesn’t want to be a disruptor on the board, so he cannot be counted upon to support your Second Amendment rights. He also just happens to be the candidate recruited by the other commissioners. Republican Jon Cooke is more independent and open-minded on the issue.
So the question is, who do you trust to defend your right to keep and bear arms? Put another way, who do you trust not to use their powers as county commissioner to undermine your Second Amendment rights?
This new law isn’t a done deal yet. A public hearing on the ordinance is set for October 1 and it’s a good bet that plenty of anti-Second Amendment agitators will be bused-in to the courthouse for the 6:30 pm hearing. For people who believe the Bill of Rights actually means something in Jefferson County, this is probably their last best chance to speak up.
Republican challenger Jodi Wilke has snagged a union endorsement in her David vs. Goliath race against incumbent Mike Chapman, who represents Jefferson County in the State House of Representatives. In his race to remain a District 24 State Rep, Chapman has been racking up endorsements. We previously covered his collection of organizational allies, as well as his fundraising advantage. He has continued to add to his list of endorsements and build his war chest. The primary poll results showed Chapman with a sizable lead going into the general election.
Wilke has not let the unfavorable odds diminish her spirit and has remained in constant motion. For a first run against a much more experienced incumbent, she has been acquitting herself well.
So it is newsworthy that underfunded, outgunned Wilke can claim a union endorsement. Union support of Democrats is not an attention-getter. But a Republican winning union support, that deserves some keystrokes.
Laborers International Union of North America, Local 292, has thrown its support behind Wilke. They represent construction workers, with a nationwide membership in excess of 500,000.
This was Wilke’s union hall out of Everett when she worked in the construction industry. She also did some work out of ##242 and 440 in Seattle. When she started own her construction business, she hired union help and signed the collective bargaining agreements.
Says Wilke, “They know I understand both sides of the union issues – both employee and employer. I became well-,versed on many of the issues facing the construction industry both in my own business and later when I worked in the mortgage industry dealing with construction loans and investor projects.
“I support the union,” she says, “for what it can offer workers [in] training, offering a living wage, and benefits. These things are critical for families and individuals to make a decent life. As a business owner, I knew I could count on a skilled, hard-working crew of any size when I was able to land a big foundation contract. This was a critical aspect of being profitable. I did not sign union contracts for the smaller jobs, such as fencing and decks but we did pay comparable wages.
“I also know the work that goes into providing a ready, knowledgeable and skilled workforce that is geared up, reliable and has a good attitude. I completed the apprenticeship program, as did my ex husband, and my older son is currently progressing through it as well. The Laborers apprenticeship program out of Kingston is an excellent program. When I was married, we even had our wedding reception at their camp! [T]hese are good people and were a big part of my life at that time.”
Judges, Lawyers Score Haas Poorly on Integrity, Competence and Leadership
Good Results for Harrison and Nole
The Jefferson County Bar Association poll of its members is out and does not look good for incumbent Prosecuting Attorney Michael Haas. The people who interact with him daily in the courthouse gave him failing grades on key professional qualities.
On integrity, 53% found him unacceptable. Only 27% found him acceptable.
On professional competence, he scored worse. 57% rated his performance as prosecuting attorney unacceptable.
On management and leadership, he scored the worst. Only 10% found him acceptable. Nearly two-thirds of judges and lawyers rated his performance as unacceptable.
James Kennedy, who is challenging Haas, received very few “unacceptable” ratings in any category, and scored significantly higher than Haas on integrity, competence and especially management and leadership.
Noah Harrison, who is running for District Court Judge against Mindy Walker, scored very high. Walker’s results spoke poorly of her reputation among her peers for competence, judicial decision-making, and preparation and effectiveness in court.
Detective Joe Nole, who is challenging incumbent Sheriff David Stanko, also scored well in all categories, far outpacing Stanko, who received only 1 “acceptable” vote in the category of management and leadership.
Jefferson County Prosecutor Michael Haas had a stronger case on retrial than the one that had sent Patrick McAllister to prison 6 years earlier. At the same time the defense case had gotten weaker.
But Haas threw the case away, turned loose a man with a long history of sexual assaults and revictimized the young woman who had looked to him for justice.
To read the reports leading up to this final installment, please click here.
McAllister’s Defense Stood on a Lie about an Artificial Knee
The Sheriff’s sergeant who responded to SL’s 911 call from McAllister’s Brinnon home has said she was the most terrified person he has encountered in his career. After she was removed from the house she began to trust the strangers trying to help her. Her story of 6 weeks of almost daily rapes, sometimes more than once a day, emerged. She spoke Waray-Waray, a little Tagalog and very little English. She moved into Dove House, Port Townsend’s domestic violence shelter. Counselors helped her talk about what happened.
Her story came in fits and starts. Details and dates translated into English were at times confused and conflicting, but the central facts never wavered.
A medical exam found lesions and evidence of bruising, injuries consistent with rape. The woman who said that she had been a virgin before that first rape in McAllister’s house also now had an STD.
McAllister at trial in 2012 limped to the stand and testified he could not possibly have raped SL. He had an artificial knee that “didn’t work right” and the ankle of the same leg had been injured. SL had testified that he would sometimes kick her. She testified he had raped her against the wall when she went into the bath to shower. He said her story was impossible because of his artificial knee.
This was the first time McAllister had said anything about an artificial knee. The best the prosecutor managed in closing was to mock McAllister for not presenting medical records or a physician to corroborate his last-minute claim.
Despite inconsistencies in SL’s account and a long delay in conducting a rape exam, the jury found McAllister guilty. He was sentenced to 250 months in prison.
The case was twice upheld on direct appeal. In a third round, McAllister’s new attorney, John Cain, argued that the trial lawyer had incompetently failed to buttress the artificial knee defense with medical testimony. Cain had a doctor ready to testify McAllister could not have raped SL because of that artificial knee. We have reproduced above a key part of that proposed testimony. The doctor was also willing to testify that the limited range of motion caused by the knee replacement made SL’s story about McAllister kicking her and raping her in the shower impossible. McAllister, he was willing to testify, could not get into and out of a bathtub without assistance because of his artificial knee.
Problem is, it’s all a lie.
McAllister did not get his artificial knee until a year after the alleged rapes. Indeed, he did not see a doctor about any knee problem until he knew he was under investigation. The rapes reported by SL occurred in March and April 2010. The medical records state McAllister:
Haas had this powerful evidence that McAllister was fabricating his main defense. It was in the medical history attached to the summary of the expert’s proposed testimony.
Here’s more: McAllister’s attorney perhaps inadvertently disclosed records referring to surveillance videos of McAllister shortly before the alleged rapes. The surveillance had been conducted in connection with McAllister’s claim of a workplace injury. They show him walking normally when he did not think he was being watched. They are discussed by the Court of Appeals. Haas knew about the videos but never obtained them for McAllister’s retrial.
And more: Shortly before SL arrived from the Philippines, McAllister pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting a woman he picked up at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. They went to a bar to go dancing before he brought her to his home where he assaulted her. Haas never contacted that woman to contradict McAllister’s immobility defense.
And still more: In his guilty plea in that case, McAllister admitted the facts in the police report as the factual basis for his guilty plea. That report states he had raped three other women he had met at AA meetings. Haas never contacted those women to contradict McAllister’s physical incapacity claims.
Yes, more: McAllister’s hired expert contended McAllister could not get into a bathtub without assistance. But before SL arrived, McAllister lived alone. Photographs of his house show no ramps, no handrails, no modifications of bathtubs to accommodate mobility limitations. Someone who could not get in and out of a bathtub without assistance would have had great difficulty maintaining McAllister’s mountainside property.
It goes on: McAllister had hiked with SL in the valley above Brinnon. He took her all over Seattle. The man who couldn’t bend his leg swam at a resort in the Philippines.
Haas had all of this to destroy McAllister’s fabricated defense, and threw it away.
STD Sleight of Hand
Early in his efforts to persuade Haas to drop the case, Cain provided test results showing that McAllister did not have an STD. SL had an STD. She said she had been a virgin before McAllister. Therefore, the argument went, she got the STD from him. But a test showing McAllister negative for an STD made SL look like the liar and cast doubt about the rest of her statements.
Problem was, it was a test for the wrong STD.
Cain had sent Haas a test for Chlamydia. SL had not contracted Chlamydia, but HPV, human papillomavirus. It is the most common STD in the United States, particularly among sexually active men, as was McAllister.
Curious that a defense lawyer would order a test for only the wrong STD, a determined prosecutor might ask for all medical records to see if anything was being held back. McAllister’s medical records from five years in prison, where STDs are of particular concern, could have been examined. Instead, Haas was snookered into believing that McAllister was free of any STD.
Willing Surrender
In his motion to dismiss, Haas told the court that the first jury should never have heard evidence of SL’s vaginal bruises and lesions because they could not possibly have been caused by McAllister. How could he know with such certainty? There was nothing to explain those injuries except McAllister’s violence.
Haas had retained no medical experts to work with him. He made this assertion based solely on the statement of an expert hired by McAllister’s lawyer. That expert had never examined SL. He had never been questioned by Haas. His work had not been evaluated by a medical expert not being paid to help keep McAllister out of jail.
McAllister’s expert witness was not qualified in forensic medicine. He did not practice in the field of trauma diagnosis and treatment.
The opinion was founded on the single assertion that all signs of bruising disappear in two weeks or less. Period. No exceptions.
A simple Google search by Haas would have revealed this blanket assertion to be problematic. It depends very much on the individual and the nature of the injury. Women take longer to heal. Organs and sensitive areas take longer than arms and legs. SL had testified the rapes happened almost daily, sometimes more than once a day, for about six weeks, and McAllister would take pills to keep or cause an erection. She is tiny. McAllister is a much larger man. The sustained, repeated trauma was inflicted on very sensitive parts of her body.
Haas did not even try to keep this important corroborative evidence.
The Defense Lost Its Motive Argument
McAllister had to explain why SL would be making this all up.
At the first trial, his lawyer argued that this young Filipino woman had studied US immigration law and learned about the “U Visa.” The argument went like this: she agreed to marry McAllister to enter the country on a finance’ visa. She moved into his house knowing his long history of sexually assaulting women because it fit her scheme, even if it exposed her to danger. His criminal history would make her allegations of rape credible when she sprang her trap. She endured, waited six weeks, then called 911 alleging rape and abuse. She no longer needed to marry McAllister. She could stay under a “U Visa,” which ensures that victims of domestic abuse remain in-country to cooperate in the prosecution of sexual offenders.
Sound implausible? The first jury thought so.
This was the only motive McAllister’s lawyers could concoct. Now it was gone.
Eight years later SL had not changed her story. She wanted McAllister punished for what he did to her. She now had a green card that did not require her testimony about rape and abuse. McAllister had no way to explain why she would still be lying.
Conclusion: Injustice, Incompetence, Indifference
A jury had once found SL credible, beyond a reasonable doubt. Years later, with her memory fading, Haas nonetheless found her “very credible,” as he said in an email to Cain.
He had a stronger case than the prosecutor before him. The defense’s already lame case could no longer even limp to the witness stand.
In losing the Court of Appeals argument Haas had the evidence that McAllister was lying about the artificial knee defense, but never brought it up.
The records we have examined show Haas never was serious about retrying McAllister. He started talking with Cain about dismissal from the moment the case was returned to Jefferson County. In October of 2017 he told Cain he could not dismiss the case only for the reason “it was too big.” Yet, he did nothing to try to win.
Months went by, until March 6, 2018, when he finally spoke with SL about the facts of her case fast coming up for trial. He had a problem. She would not go away. She wanted justice.
Cain gave him an out. In February he sent Haas a polygraph he had arranged for McAllister. Even though McAllister was lying about his artificial knee defense, somehow he passed.
Haas turned to trained polygrapher Detective Joe Nole of the Sheriff’s Office for advice. We requested all of the communications between them on this subject. The response to our public records request from Haas was oddly scant. He dropped this case in large part because, as he told the court, he “could not ignore” the polygraph. Yet the records he produced contain no written report or memoranda on the reliability of McAllister’s polygraph examination.
The polygraph examination reveals reason to be skeptical. The examiner asked McAllister if he had ever tried to get a woman “to do something sexual she didn’t want to.” McAllister was also asked, other than SL, “in the past 20 years have you treated any woman in an abusive manner?” And, “have you made any woman feel abused or threatened.”
McAllister answered “no” to all these questions. Yet, he had pled guilty to sexual assault in 2009, admitting as part of his plea a report he had raped three other women; he had been arrested in Kitsap County for rape; and five women had taken out restraining orders against him because he was “violent, abusive and controlling.”
Detective Nole agreed to speak with us. From what he was provided to review he confirmed the exam did not detect deception. But that was far as he would go. He says he told Haas to pass this along to McAllister’s lawyer. “Let’s see how confident they are. Tell them, ‘Let Joe test you.’”
But even more importantly, Nole, like any good polygrapher, cautioned Haas: Don’t rely on this polygraph to make any decision. They are not that reliable.
Haas told none of this to the court when he moved to drop the charges.
Haas notified SL by email that he was turning loose the man she says raped and beat her. In that email, he said he believed her, though the very next day he would tell the court he had to believe McAllister because of the polygraph.
We were not sure how to write the conclusion to this series of reports on how Michael Hass dumped a rape case and its victim. Then it was provided for us. Just as we were struggling for the right closing words we received an email from SL’s brother. He wrote to let us know that SL was filing a complaint against Haas with the Washington State Bar Association.
[This article has been edited since initial publication for clarification and to correct typographical errors]
I had a brief and cordial correspondence recently with Port Townsend City Councilman David Faber about the way commissioners are elected in Jefferson County. With the race for District 3 County Commissioner perched atop the local ballot, I asked him how he felt about a system in which people who do not reside in District 3 can determine who will represent the people who live there.
Mr. Faber replied (I’m paraphrasing here) that he was basically okay with that because the county commission represents all residents of the county. That’s his opinion and I absolutely defend his right to it, but the logic struck me as quizzical. It’s analogous to allowing the people of Jefferson County to elect a member of Congress in the 14th Congressional District of Ohio or to decide the US Senate race in Montana because, as the logic goes, Congress represents all residents of the United States.
The fact people from Port Townsend or anywhere else not in District 3 having the power to vote for a commissioner to represent the people of Brinnon, Quilcene, Port Ludlow and other far flung corners of District 3, amounts to disenfranchisement of the people who live in District 3.
Primary elections for county commissioner are decided by voters who actually live in a particular district, but the winner in November is determined in what boils down to an at-large election. It’s farcical for District 3 citizens to determine the primary, only to have their decision potentially overturned in the general election by voters who do not live in the district.
This is fake democracy. If you’re happy with the status quo, stop reading now. But if you believe the current system for electing commissioners is flawed, it’s time to start thinking about how to bring representative democracy to Jefferson County.
It’s difficult to fathom the idea that citizens of 21st century America must labor to establish for themselves something called Home Rule. Requests for Home Rule are a relic of the colonial era, when peoples scattered across the continents, hardly any of whom were white, had to petition an emperor in London or Paris for the right of self-determination. Yet we in Jefferson County find ourselves in the position of drafting entreaties for the right to determine who will represent us within a governing body.
It begins with a petition for a Home Rule Charter, and the collection and submission of signatures of people who live in Jefferson County. Gathering the requisite number of signatures qualifies the issue to appear on the general election ballot. Voters are then asked whether they wish to proceed and elect a slate of fellow residents to deliberate and prepare a Home Rule Charter for the county.
If it sounds complicated, that’s because it is. It was tried in 2013 and the effort went down in flames with 70% of voters opposing the idea. It lost in every precinct in the county save Precinct 600, where 24 voters in Hoh supported Home Rule while 20 opposed it.
Would Jefferson County voters want to reconsider the issue? The process is onerous, labor intensive, time consuming and costly. It demands asking our neighbors to support liberty and restore the fundamental precepts of representative democracy.
No doubt the complexity of the matter turns off many voters. Even if a Home Rule Petition were approved, it would take years before we could properly enfranchise all the people of the county.Laden with so many steps over so long a period of time, the process of establishing Home Rule can easily cloud the larger idea: the idea of individual liberty, of the opportunity for people to determine their own destiny through the act of allowing people to vote for their own representative on the county commission.
It’s easy to dismiss these arguments as overly dramatic but they are real and fundamental to the character of America.
For whatever reason, Jefferson County voted five years ago to deny themselves the right to determine their own local representatives on the county commission. Has the time come to change how we elect our commissioners? The 2020 election cycle is not far away. It’s not easy, but nothing worth doing is ever is.
She couldn’t tell the prosecutor from the defense team. When SL walked into the room where Jefferson County Prosecutor Michael Haas had told her to appear for a deposition, she saw men so friendly with each other she felt isolated and alone. She had never met Haas. They had spoken for the first time ten days earlier. He had informed her she would have to appear at the Tacoma offices for the lawyer representing Patrick McAllister, who had previously been convicted of raping and assaulting her over a period of six weeks in 2010 and was facing retrial.
She had asked Haas to meet with her, to help her prepare to talk again about terrible things she had been trying to forget. She wanted to do a good job. She wanted to see McAllister brought to justice. But Haas would not help her get ready. All he did was send her a pile of paper she didn’t have time to look at until thirty minutes before the deposition started.
The deposition lasted over four hours. The transcript reveals only a single break of some minutes. It went through the lunch hour, but SL was not given a chance to eat. It was a grueling, difficult experience. She was taken again through the rapes, starting on March 18, 2010, when she arrived from the Philippines, a young woman from a small, remote village on the Island of Leyte. She then spoke and understood very little English.
She had met McAllister through her sister’s husband, an American. They had spoken by telephone then McAllister had visited. The men in her family guarded him at night because their poor house was lacking walls. McAllister grew weary of the village. He wanted to go to a resort. SL’s father came along to chaperone. He made them all sleep in the same room, with his daughter in his bed. After this he agreed to let her marry McAllister.
McAllister lied about his prior convictions for sexual assault to get SL through customs. (See this report by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.) He brought her to his Brinnon house (shown above) and the rapes began. She says that almost every day he forced intercourse upon her. He grabbed her neck and made her perform oral sex. He beat and kicked her. She tried pushing him off, but was overpowered. She is tiny. She stands not much taller than a grocery cart. McAllister had been an iron worker and weighed 170 pounds.
She was raped in the living room and bedroom, beaten in the kitchen, kicked for no reason while she was doing the cooking. When she locked the bathroom door to take a shower in peace, she says McAllister got the door open and raped her in the bathtub, pinning her against the wall.
She became sore and bruised; it didn’t matter. When McAllister needed a boost , she says, “he took a pill to make his penis strong.”
McAllister tried to keep her isolated. She was scared to use the telephone—until the day she found the courage to call 911 and ask for help in getting out of his house. The Sheriff’s sergeant who arrived at the house says she was the most terrified person he has encountered in his law enforcement career.
She answered all the investigator’s questions, never backing down. Sometimes she asked the meaning of words or couldn’t remember exact dates. But she always answered, no matter how humiliating the question.
Haas did not help. He never called for a break. Contrary to the rules on depositions, he let an investigator grill SL. He did not stop questions about relationships before and after the incidents. She was made to name her current boyfriend. She was made to state the age at which her menstruation began.
SL had asked DeeDee Spann to be present and Spann was there, but only as an observer. Spann was a victim/witness advocate in the Prosecutor’s Office. She had previously worked at Port Townsend’s domestic violence shelter, Dove House, where SL had stayed and received counseling after she fled McAllister.
Spann was so upset by the mistreatment of SL that with Haas’ Chief Deputy Prosecutor, Julian St. Marie, she sought a judicial order to stop it from happening again.
The motion was necessary because at the end of the deposition, Haas had agreed to give the defense lawyer and his investigator another shot at SL.
Highly Irregular
James Kennedy, a prosecutor in Clallam County and a former prosecutor in Haas’ office, has severely criticized Haas for letting any of this happen. He is challenging Haas in the November election. He says that prosecutors should always fight to keep a rape victim from going through something like this. Haas’ predecessor, Scott Rosekrans, who won the initial rape conviction of McAllister, agrees.
Haas might dismiss their concerns as politically motivated. But members of his own office also felt that the deposition he permitted veered out of bounds.
Before the second deposition could occur, Spann and St. Marie went to court to try to stop what Haas had agreed to.
Spann told the court that SL “was visibly distraught and tearful at times.” She described the questioning as “relentless and with a very accusatory tone.” The transcript shows that Haas never called for a break to allow SL to compose herself. He never objected to the investigator’s conduct. To the contrary, at several points in the deposition he cracks jokes and makes light-hearted small talk with McAllister’s team.
In her motion, St. Marie argued that the sole purpose of the questioning was “bad faith” and intended “to annoy, embarrass or oppress the victim.” She pointed out that SL’s relationships before and after the rapes were matters placed off limits by Washington’s rape shield laws and that only lawyers are permitted to take depositions.
Haas has not answered our questions as to why he arranged for and allowed SL to be subjected to such an ordeal.
We asked Rosekrans, who knew SL well from the first trial, why Haas would let the victim he was supposed to be standing up for be subjected to such mistreatment. .
“He must have been hoping she would be worn down and go away,” Rosekrans answered.
If that motive explained Haas’ otherwise inexplicable behavior, it didn’t pan out.
Instead of being worn down, SL demonstrated strength and determination. Yes, she would endure another deposition. She would do what it took to see that McAllister was retried. “I wanted to go to trial,” she has told us.
The case was set for May. Haas was not prepared. He had retained no expert witnesses nor interviewed any defense witnesses. He had not secured key evidence that would destroy McAllister’s credibility. He had not enlisted the assistance of the detective in charge of the case. He had not even notified SL and her sister, two of the only four witnesses he had named, to make arrangements to travel to Port Townsend. He had to do something.
Based on our interviews of SL and her brother, and a review of Haas’ correspondence and pleadings, what Haas did was avoid SL. He never met or spoke with her again before he dropped the charges.
Our next report will show that Haas cut loose a violent, dangerous man when he had a stronger case than the one that sent McAllister to prison six years earlier.
Michael Haas has refused to answer any questions on how he handled the case of State versus McAllister and the woman at the center of that rape case. As reported previously, Haas dismissed the charges without ever first telling the victim. He did not speak with her for eight months after getting the case, and then only ten days before her deposition. He refused to meet with her beforehand, and, as our next report will show, failed to protect her from impermissibly intrusive questioning by an investigator who should not have been allowed to interrogate her in the first place.
Our last report will show how a competent attorney would likely have succeeded in convicting Patrick McAllister. Contrary to Haas’ representations to the court, without his doing anything, his case had grown considerably stronger and not weaker. He had much more to work with, thanks to McAllister himself and his attorney. Instead, Haas dumped the case and dropped all charges against a man with a long history of violently and sexually abusing women.
It is our policy to always contact the subject of a story before publication. When we receive written answers, we publish them verbatim.
We have twice contacted Mr. Haas with questions and an open invitation for him to speak. We would say he might have ignored us. But he has made it clear he is refusing to answer any questions. On his campaign website, after we invited him to comment on our reporting, he issued a statement accusing us of “mis-stating” facts–but not stating what it was he contends we got wrong. He also stated he would be answering no questions.
So that our readers know we have attempted to investigate this case fairly and thoroughly, while giving Mr. Haas full opportunity to tell his side, here are the questions we have put to him which he will not answer. We have summarized then from two lengthy emails to Mr. Haas:
Has he ever spoken with SL to explain why he dropped the case even though he told her he believes that she was raped and assaulted?
Why did he allow a non-lawyer to interrogate her, why did he require SL to travel 100 miles roundtrip to the defense lawyer’s office, why did he not insist she get a meaningful break during the over 4-hour interrogation and why did he not stop the investigator from asking questions prohibited by Washington’s rape shield law?
What did he do to prepare his own case for trial? Why did he not obtain assistance from the Sheriff’s office to investigate the defense’s claims and its witnesses? Why did he not obtain expert help to assess the credibility and accuracy of medical experts the defense intended to call as witnesses?
Did he ever speak with the detective who had conducted the investigation of the rape and assault charges against McAllister?
Did he obtain the files of the federal conviction in which McAllister had admitted to lying to immigration authorities when he brought SL into the country? Did he obtain the sentencing report which would have detailed McAllister’s full prior criminal history and his statements about his involvement with SL and his crimes?
The defense contended that McAllister was physically unable to have raped SL. What did Haas do to investigate those claims, such as obtaining evidence from McAllister’s five years in prison as to how he conducted himself or conducting surveillance to determine if McAllister were feigning his physical limitations?
Had he attempted to contact the women before SL who were assaulted by McAllister? McAllister had overpowered them and their testimony would contradict his claims of being physically unable to rape a woman, especially someone as small as SL.
Lastly, why had he refused to meet with the woman whose rape case he was supposed to be prosecuting?
