Old news

  In the winter of 1980 and '81 I went to Nome to run the Nome Nugget, Alaska's oldest continuously published newspaper for my friend Mark Fuersteneau who had just purchased the Nugget while he toured newspapers Outside. My first task there while Mark was still around was to cover the first murder trial in years in Nome.  At the time I was reading Norman Mailer's "Executioner's Song," a non fiction account of the life of Utah murderer Gary Gilmore. If you have ever read any of Mailer's non fiction you know the excruciating detail he goes into.With that influence I went off to cover the trial. The verdict came down in the middle of the night a week later on the day we had to prepare the paper which had to be shipped to Anchorage by airplane for printing and sent back to Nome for Thursday distribution. So first thing in the morning I started writing telling Mark about two pages typed double spaced. I don't recall how many pages I wrote that morning but it was a lot more than two. As a matter of fact it filled half the front page, two full inside pages and jumped a couple of times to the back of the book – on deadline. To this day I think of this as the best news story I ever wrote. That is not comparing to anyone else, but me comparing my writing to my writing.  However I will tell you this: after the paper came out both attorneys came to the office and purchased several copies and both said they wanted to send them to their law school professors. Later in the week the judge took me to lunch and told me it was the best trial story he had ever read. It certainly is the longest, so be warned.
So here it is, the best news story I have ever written.

After a week-long trial, a Superior Court jury early Tuesday morning returned with a verdict, finding Ronald Bloomstrand, 33, of Nome, Alaska, and Hay River, Northwest Territories, Canada, guilty of manslaughter.

Bloomstrand had been charged with first degree murder in the shooting death of Harris Okbaok of Teller last June 22 in Nome.

As Judge Paul B. Jones polled the jurors at the 2 a.m. meeting Bloomstrand sat quietly at the defense table on the south side of the courtroom, his lean, stoic Indian face showing little emotion, the same demeanor that had sustained itself throughout the trial, failing him only once. Where he had faced a life in prison, the verdict on the lesser charge threatened a maximum 20 years, not a situation to cheer but better than what might have been.

Ron Bloomstrand had spent a lot of time at that table over the past week. He sat there looking straight ahead or looking down at the papers in front of him while District Attorney Mike White and defense counsel Jim Ottinger argued the case that would decide his future. The two attorneys could not have presented any more contrasting styles if they had wanted to. Jim Ottinger, who practiced mostly in Alaska’s urban center, Anchorage, appeared in court every days dressed in tailored suits, wearing shiny black shoes, and appeared to every measure the sophisticated urbane attorney. Mike White on the other hand wore plaid shirts and barely matching ties, covered by a herringbone jacket with leather patches at the elbows. His pants were one level above jeans and his shoes were low-cut hiking boots, a fashion much more suited to the courtrooms of rural Alaska, than they might have been in urban Anchorage.

After two full days of jury selection in which Jim Ottinger of Anchorage picked up on the difficulty of finding 12 persons in a small town who knew neither stories about the case or people involved, trial began in earnest Wednesday Morning.

That was when Mike White began spinning the web of circumstantial evidence he hoped would lead to a first-degree murder conviction.

Employees of the Board of Trade Saloon and the Polar Bar testified they thought Ron Bloomstrand was in a bad mood the evening of June 22.

One witness testified that morning that he’d seen Ron Bloomstrand and Harris Okbaok go into Bloomstrand’s apartment at First and Steadman the evening of the 22^nd and that he saw Ron Bloomstrand leave alone at about 11 p.m.

Mike White called Ed Ottinger of Nome who said Bloomstrand had come to his house and said there was a dead man in his house and there was blood all over the place. Ed Ottinger, the witness not Jim Ottinger the attorney, also related through questioning a conversation he had with Ron Bloomstrand in which he said Bloomstrand had demonstrated how he held the gun when Harris Okbaok was shot.

Ed Ottinger, the witness, related how he went to find his and Bloomstrand’s employer, James West, owner of the Board of Trade Saloon after Bloomstrand went to sleep at Ed Ottinger’s place. When Ed Ottinger could not find West, he called police.

After a recess for lunch,  Mike White, the district attorney, began calling a series of police and expert witnesses. The first was Officer Joe Lyon of the Nome Police Department.

Lyon described how he and State Trooper Robert Yates entered Bloomstrand’s apartment and found Harris Okbaok’s body, and how they checked for signs of life and how they looked the apartment over for other persons, but not for evidence and were careful not to disturb anything.

Officer Lyon told how he called his dispatcher who notified Chief Robert Kauer and how they stayed at the scene until Chief Kauer arrived with Lt. Richard Finney. They knew where Bloomstrand was and went to the home of Ed Ottinger, the witness. There Lyon said he and Trooper Yates waited outside while Chief Kauer and Lt. Finney made the arrest. He said he saw them come out of the building with Bloomstrand in custody.

Mike White asked him to point out the suspect arrested. Lyon pointed to Ron Bloomstrand and said, “He’s sitting next to Mr. Ottinger.”

“Please let the record show the witness indicated Mr. Jim Ottinger, the defense attorney, not Ed Ottinger of Nome,” Mike White said. Jim Ottinger, the attorney, smiled at that one.

Under questioning, Officer Lyon also said Ron Bloomstrand, while being transported the night of the shooting, was yelling and asking what he was supposed to have done and saying the police were picking on Eskimos and Indians.

Then Jim Ottinger cross examined. He asked if Mr. Bloomstrand was excited. Officer Lyon said he was. Ottinger asked about the times of the arrest, and transport to jail and back to the police station and back to the jail, questions Officer Lyon answered to the best of his recollection.

Mike White then called Inspector Lyle Haugden of the Alaska State Troopers’ office in Anchorage. Inspector Haugden had done some of the detail work on physical evidence and sent some of the evidence to the FBI for further investigation. What he provided for the most part was what attorneys call chain of custody, used to show evidence was always protected from outside influence.

After Haugden Mike White called Robert Yates, the Alaska State Trooper in the Nome Detachment who had responded the first night. Trooper Yates described how he and Officer Lyon had proceeded the night of the shooting. He was also asked to describe the wounds of the decedent, Harris Okbaok. He told of the upper part of the right index finger being missing and a jagged wound to a finger on the left hand and said he was unable to see the entry wound in Harris Okbaok’s head because of the blood.

Jim Ottinger began his cross-examination asking, “Did you transport Mr. Bloomstrand?”

“Yes, the following afternoon to arraignments.”

“The afternoon of the 23^rd?”

“Yes.”

“At that time, did Mr. Bloomstrand say anything to you and Mr. White about …”

Ottinger never finished that question as Mike White, the district attorney jumped up to shout, “Objection!”

The two approached the bench to talk with Judge Paul Jones. After a short discussion, Judge Jones excused the jury while the two argued a point of law key to the defense.

Both attorneys, obviously agitated, paced in circles while they argued the admissibility of a statement Ron Bloomstrand allegedly made to White and Yates asking why he was being charged with first degree murder when the shooting was an accident.

Mike White said the defendant was trying to get a statement into the record that was hearsay and he gets no chance to cross examine.

If the statement stands, Jim Ottinger would have been able to place Ron Bloomstrand’s defense that the shooting was an accident into the record without having to put Bloomstrand on the stand where he would be subject to cross-examination by Mike White.

“I’m asking a question which seeks to illustrate the state of mind.” Jim Ottinger argued to the judge.

“The state of mind of the Mr. Bloomstrand at the time of the arraignment is immaterial,” Mike White responded.

“Everything he said that night has been brought into evidence through other people. But when he asks ‘why am I being charged with firs degree murder?’ it’s not. It shows he was dazed, somewhat confused while he was being asked to plead guilty or not guilty, Jim Ottinger said.

Judge Paul Jones ruled the question was outside the rules of direct examination and sustained the objection of Mike White If the accident defense was to come out before the jury it appeared Jim Ottinger would have to put his client on the stand and subject him to Mike White’s cross examination.

The jury returned and  the district attorney called Nome Police Chief Bob Kauer. Defendant Ron Bloomstrand from his chair at the table had a decided reaction when Chief Kauer took the stand. The defendant who had been staring straight ahead through most of the proceedings now turned that stare directly at the witness for most of the time the police chief was testifying.

Chief Kauer answered questions about what he saw in the apartment, how the gun was found under the bed, bullet fragments, the blood, the posture of Harris Okbaok’s body the circumstances of the arrest, and he identified several pieces of evidence including the Colt Lawman .357 magnum revolver, the weapon in question. Sgt. Michael Murphy of the Nome Police Department testified to how he had found the pistol under the bed in Ron Bloomstrand’s bedroom along with an unfired cartridge and an empty shell casing.

Next, Mike White called Donald R. Riedman, an FBI specialist in firearms identification. Agent Riedman came all the way from Virginia to tell the jury the Colt Lawman .357 magnum revolver was indeed the weapon that had fired the bullet that killed Harris Okbaok. He also, in response to Mike White’s questioning, showed why the gun would not fire accidentally if thrown or dropped. Agent Riedman demonstrated the workings of a transfer bar within the mechanism of the gun which would allow the firing pin to hit the primer in the shell only if the trigger were pulled.

Agent Riedman also testified that he’d found only one fingerprint on the gun, that identified as from the right index finger of Ron Bloomstrand. He also said he had examined the shirt Harris Okbaok had been wearing the night he died and had found traces of chemicals found in gunpowder on the sleeves and upper chest portion of the garment. Mike White asked if that was consistent with a bullet wound “right here” and pointed to his own forehead just above the left eye.

“Yes,” Agent Riedman replied.

“And the sleeve?”

“No, unless the arms were up around the head,” Agent Riedman said.

After a series of questions on the ease with which the gun could be fired, Agent Riedman was excused to return to Virginia.

The next witness for the prosecution was Stephen Ede, a forensic chemist from Anchorage. He explained that he had examined swab tests taken from both Ron Bloomstrand’s  and Harris Okbaok’s hands. He said he found traces of barium and antimony on the hands swabs, consistent with a gun having been fired by one at another who had his hands up in front of the gun.

Then, Dr. Michael Propst, the Anchorage pathologist who preformed the autopsy on Harris Okbaok told in physical terms how the victim died. He said the bullet first hit the middle finger of the right hand, then hit the tip of the index finger on the left hand amputating it above the first joint. The two wounds caused the bulled to tumble, he said, making a keyhole shaped wound where it entered the forehead. Then the bullet progressed downward until it lodged in the back of Harris Okbaok’s throat. The pathologist said with the type of wound, the victim was unconscious almost immediately and dead within seconds.

“What is your opinion as to the position of the hands?” Mike White asked. Expert witnesses are allowed to give their opinions.

“Like this,” Dr. Propst said, holding his hands up with the left hand closer to his forehead and the backs of both hands turned outward.

“Could Harris Okbaok have shot himself?”

“No, it could not have been done the way the hands were.”

Then Jim Ottinger, the defense counsel, was given a chance to cross examine.

“What was the spatial difference between the hands?” he asked.

“It could have been at arm’s length or anywhere in between. I don’t think they were on top of each other.”

“The forehead could have been atop the hand?”

“Yes.”

And then Dr. Propst confirmed through questioning that Harris Okbaok’s hands had been turned with the backs outward at the time of the shooting.

When the cross examination ended, Mike White asked that the court note that First and Steadman was in the Second Judicial District. Judge Jones said, so noted, and with that Mike White rested the case for the State of Alaska.

That afternoon, Thursday, defense attorney Jim Ottinger began to present the case for Ron Bloomstrand. The first witness he called was Percy Atwater.

Percy Atwater testified to the fact he had gone shooting with Ron Bloomstrand June 19 and they had fired Bloomstrand’s Colt Lawman .357 magnum revolver several times.

“Is it hard to shoot, easy to shoot?” Ottinger asked.

“Easy to shoot.”

The next witness was Kenneth Miller. After preliminary questions, Jim Ottinger asked Miller if he was with Ron Bloomstrand June 22.

“Yes.”

“What did you do?”

“We went down to Teller.”

“How long were you gone?”

“We left around 2 or 3, back about 6:30.”

“Were you drinking alcohol?”

“Beer.”

“Very many?”

“Yes.”

“Was Ron Bloomstrand intoxicated?”

“Yes.”

“Did you go to any bars when you got back?”

“We went down to the BOT.”

“How long were you there?”

“I left after a minute.”

“Was he very inebriated?”

“Yes.”

Prosecutor Mike White cross examined and asked how long it took to drive back from Teller. Kenneth Miller said less than an hour, to which Mike White said it was 74 miles from Teller to Nome.

So, Ron was driving fast, Mike White said, “so fast in fact you asked him to stop?”

“Yes.”

The next defense witness called was Daisy Jack, a house parent at the Nome Receiving Home and Ron Bloomstrand’s mother in law. Jim Ottinger asked her, “Did Ron come to your house any time during the night of June 22 and 23?”

“Yes.”

“What did he say?”

“I think he say, ‘maybe I killed somebody with my pistol.’”

“Did he stay long?”

“He was just a few minutes.”

Mike White cross examined:

“Did Ron appear calm?”

“He was the way he is.”

“Did he appear drunk?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did he stagger?”

“No.”

“Did he stagger?”

“I don’t think he was drunk. He didn’t stagger.”

Mrs. Jack was excused and Jim Ottinger called Percy Atwater back to the witness stand. Atwater testified that he, too, had fired the Colt Lawman .357 magnum revolver June 19. He said he had seen Ron Bloomstrand shoot the revolver with both hands and that the gun was easier to shoot than others he had fired.

Jim Ottinger turned to Ron Bloomstrand and for the first time, the long face that had remained virtually unchanged throughout the trial changed. The moment had come, the moment he would have to decide whether to take the stand or not. The two huddled and whispered at the defense table for less than a minute and then Ottinger asked for a recess to “advise my client of some of his rights.”

After a short recess everyone returned to the courtroom but one of the jurors was missing. While they waited Jim Ottinger talked with Ron Bloomstrand at the defense table. Ron Bloomstrand still appeared stoic but the inner pressure was beginning to have outward signs. While they talked he mostly listened intently, but some of the color had gone out of his face and he seemed a little less assured, taking occasional deep breaths.

When the juror finally returned and took her seat, Jim Ottinger called his client to the witness stand.

Jim Ottinger pointed to a diagram of Ron Bloomstrand’s bedroom which the prosecution had used.

“Does anything catch your eye?” he asked.

Ron Bloomstrand spoke in a very low voice, difficult to here across the courtroom, “doorway’s too small.”

Jim Ottinger went to a diagram of the whole apartment. “Anything different?”

“The table, closer to the wall, straight,” Ron Bloomstrand answered quietly, referring to an angular position of the kitchen table depicted in the drawing.

Ron Bloomstrand’s lawyer then confirmed through his client that he had fired the Cold Lawman .357 magnum revolver several times with the Atwaters June 19.

Then Ottinger led Ron Bloomstrand through that fatal day of June 22, a day in which Bloomstrand said he awakened around 11 a.m. and later in the afternoon drove to Teller with Kenneth Miller. He agreed they had taken liquor with them and consumed quite a bit. He said he and Miller went to the Board of Trade when they returned but Miller left shortly. He said he met Harris Okbaok in the BOT.

“Do you recall the conversation?” Jim Ottinger asked his client.

“He said he’d give me a .30-30 for a ride to Teller. I told him I just got back. Is and I got a .357 I don’t need a .30-30. He said he’d give me the price of gas.”

“Then you left to go to your place with Harris Okbaok?”

“Not right away.”

“Describe what happened at your apartment.”

“He asked for the bathroom and I told him where it was. I opened a couple of beers. He came out and wanted to see the pistol. I went and got it and handed it to him. He asked if it was loaded. I think I told him ‘I don’t know.’ He asked if he could pull the trigger.”

“Did he pull it more than once?”

“Umm, he was looking at the gun, handled in both hands, cocked the hammer back, pulled the trigger, had the gun sideways in his hand. I remember tellin’ him I got to go to bed. He handed the gun in his right hand. I took the gun. All I remember (here he paused and took a heavy breath then went on) is Harris falling away from me. Up against the wall … I slipped.” He looked away,  toward the judge at his right and took several deep breaths.

Jim Ottinger asked Ron Bloomstrand, “Do you remember what happened after that? Do you remember striking the wall?”

“Yes,” Ron Bloomstrand said in a barely audible mumble, staring at the floor in front of him, his head bobbing apparently fighting tears.”

“Would you like a break?” Judge Paul Jones interrupted.

“Mr. Bloomstrand, would you like a recess?” Jim Ottinger asked.

His client nodded in the affirmative and the court called a 15 minute recess.

Following the recess Ron Bloomstrand returned to the witness stand with some of his composure regained. Jim Ottinger, the attorney, asked if he remembered going to the home of Ed Ottinger, the witness. He also asked if Ron Bloomstrand remembered seeing Daisy Jack, being arrested, going to jail,  to the hospital, to the police station, being arraigned, telling Trooper Yates and District Attorney White it was an accident, talking with James West, or a doctor who drew blood for an alcohol test.

Ron Bloomstrand could remember few or none of the events following the shooting of Harris Okbaok.

“To the best of your ability, what is the first thing you remember after the shooting of Harris Okbaok?”

“Being charged with first degree murder.”

After a few more questions, Jim Ottinger relinquished the defendant to prosecutor Mike White for cross examination.

Mike White took to the questioning aggressively.

“Don’t you remember when you were arrested saying ‘What did I do? Why are you always picking on Indians and Eskimos?’”

Ron Bloomstrand shook his head no.

Mike White asked several more questions, the answers to which Ron Bloomstrand said he did not remember.

“Do you know how much you had to drink?”

“Quite a bit.”

“How’s your memory when you’re drunk?”

The answer was mumbled.

“Do you pass out when you’re drunk?”

“No … sometimes  I do.”

“Do you recall what you were doing in the BOT?”

“No.”

“You were trying to pick fights with several people.”

“I might have. I do that sometimes.”

Mike White asked several more questions to which Ron Bloomstrand said he didn’t know or didn’t remember.

Then Mike White attempted to lead Ron Bloomstrand through the shooting again. He placed the Colt Lawman .357 magnum revolver in front of Ron Bloomstrand and asked him to show how the shooting occurred. And they held a long exchange over just how the gun was passed between Harris Okbaok and Ron Bloomstrand before it went off.

After a lunch recess, Mike White resumed, this time using a table placed in the center of the courtroom. Ron Bloomstrand told what he knew up to the stumble he had claimed, but questions after that brought “I-don’t-remember” responses.

The last question before the prosecution relinquished the defendant was: “Do you recall killing Harris Okbaok?”

The response was, “I don’t remember.”

Defense attorney Jim Ottinger then questioned his client again on redirect.

He asked Ron Bloomstrand again to recreate the shooting. This time the defendant first drew the scene on paper hanging from an easel, then the two sat down at the table in the center of the courtroom and Ron Bloomstrand again attempted to show how Harris Okbaok had passed the Colt Lawman .357 magnum revolver to him handle first. Ron Bloomstrand recalled starting to stand up, slipping or tripping, falling against the wall and Harris Okbaok falling away from him.

With a short recross examination by Mike White concerning the recoil of the Colt Lawman .357 magnum revolver, Ron Bloomstrand’s time on the witness stand came to an end. That was Friday.

Monday afternoon Mike White called four rebuttal witnesses: Ed Ottinger, the witness, who again described how Ron Bloomstrand had told him the shooting occurred; Harris Okbaok’s brother who said Harris didn’t own a .30-30; Bruce Isabel, who lives across from witness Ed Ottinger’s house, June 23 saw a man in the window shortly before the police showed up; and Officer Joe Lyon who played a videotape of Ron Bloomstrand sometime on the night he was arrested as Lyon was attempting to administer a sobriety test.

After the questioning if these witnesses and cross examination by Jim Ottinger the attorney, the time came for final arguments and the charge to the jury.

Jim Ottinger argued the charge should not be given so late in the day, that it would be better if the jury got the case the following morning, but the judge allowed the process to continue.

After an hour’s recess for members of the jury to go home to gather some clothes and personal effects in anticipation of an overnight session, final arguments began shortly after 6 p.m. Monday.

District attorney Mike White charged into his final argument just as he’d pursued his aggressive questioning throughout the trial. He pointed out what he felt were inconsistencies in Ron Bloomstrand’s “selective memory.” He pointed out the fact that only Ron Bloomstrand’s fingerprints were on the Colt Lawman .357 magnum revolver; he pointed out that several people had testified to Ron Bloomstrand’s mood both before and after the shooting. In a rapid-fire delivery he pointed to what he said were facts that were inconsistent with the accident defense. He mentioned the alleged violent mood, the facts the defendant didn’t call police or an ambulance, his changes in stories.

“Harris Okbaok’s hands are pretty compelling testimony that it wasn’t an accident.” And he attacked what he called “selective memory.”

He also challenged the defense as being “vague on details.”

Then he told the jury what most prosecutors come to say, that they were not just there to see if the accused is innocent but also to find him guilty if that is right.” It is serious for the defendant, yourselves and the community. You are here to find innocent people innocent but also to find guilty people guilty.

“The story he (Ron Bloomstrand) gave doesn’t make sense in the details.”

Jim Ottinger, the defense attorney, then rose to give his final argument for his client. He removed a drawing from the easel still standing in the courtroom and then told the jury if he had done anything to offend the jury not to hold it against his client.

He said the D.A. started with a theory and a hypothesis and the defense submits it was based on faulty logic and faulty evidence. Jim Ottinger first attacked some of the testimony of some of the witnesses and then he said, “I don’t think it was proven he was violent.

“In a case like this we try to see what the reason was. What was the motive? If he was going to make a conscious choice, he’d have a motive. What was the motive here? No motive has been shown. Why would Mr. Bloomstrand want to do away with Mr. Okbaok?”

Jim Ottinger then talked about the inconsistencies he saw in testimony about Bloomstrand’s mood that night. “This person saw a fight, this person didn’t.”

He returned to the motive question. “There has been no motive shown why Mr. Bloomstrand would want to deprive anyone of his life. Without the motive where is the conscious objective to kill someone?”

“The prosecution is based on one piece of circumstantial evidence – Mr. Okbaok’s hands. But that’s flawed.” He showed how from testimony it had been shown that Harris Okbaok raised his hands with the palms inward toward the face. “ A person goes like this …”  Jim Ottinger held his hands up with the palms out. “That’s what I  looked at when I saw the autopsy report. It’s not logical (palms in), it’s not natural.”

He then defended Ron Bloomstrand’s testimony as truth drawn from the fragments of a memory upset and shocked from the shooting. He then talked his way through the events surrounding the shooting, again from his client’s point of view. Through it all the courtroom was so quiet you could hear the rustling as jurors twiddled their fingers.

Ron Bloomstrand sat quietly but as the moment of the shooting came in Jim Ottinger’s speech, his jaw tightened and he appeared to grow emotional again.

Still, Jim Ottinger continued through the events pausing at times to let points sink in. He maintained the fragments Ron Bloomstrand was able to recall were the truth in the case and on that basis the jury could only find that Ron Bloomstrand was not guilty of any crime.

Mike White  then had his chance to rebut Jim Ottinger’s arguments , saying first of all motive need not be considered, that a crime could be caused by emotion, that murder was most often an emotional thing, not rational. “Somebody gets  mad and blows up.” He talked about the hands again. He picked up the Colt Lawman .357 magnum revolver and said, “nobody knows what somebody’s going to do unless he’s been faced with one of these.”

And he said, “from your experience a man in a mood to kill has a loaded gun in his hand and something goes wrong, you don’t want to be around.” After a few more short comments Mike White sat down and the case was ready to go to the jury.

Judge Paul Jones read his instructions to the jury about 8:30 p.m. Monday and the jury left the courtroom to begin deliberations.

Shortly after midnight Tuesday morning, the call went out that the jury had reached a verdict. All the principals were rounded up in town and court resumed at about 2 a.m. At that time the jury foreman David G. Harding delivered the verdict to Judge Jones. The judge read aloud the three-part decision which found Ronald Bloomstrand innocent of first degree murder, innocent of second degree murder and guilty of manslaughter. Judge Jones set sentencing for Dec. 10 after a presentence investigation could be carried out. He set bail at $50,000 until a work-release bonding agreement could be worked out.

District Attorney Mike White complimented the Nome Police Department on the quality of work and said he thought the verdict was fair considering the evidence presented. Jim Ottinger, the defense attorney, said the wished the jury had been charged Tuesday morning and that he had expected either an innocent verdict of a lesser negligent homicide verdict. Ron Bloomstrand returned to his cell in the basement of the Post Office building.

-->