Alaska court to hear murder appeal

THE OLYMPIAN | • Published December 01, 2009

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The Alaska Court of Appeals will hear arguments Thursday that Mechele Linehan was wrongly convicted of a murder conspiracy because the judge allowed evidence about her career as a stripper.

She was convicted in 2007 of conspiring with a man in love with her to kill Kent Leppink in 1996 for $1 million in life insurance money. Now 37, she is serving a 99-year sentence.

Leppink, a commercial fisherman, had been her fiancé.

The gunman, John Carlin, was convicted separately. He died after a prison attack in 2008.

Linehan’s lawyers argue that Superior Court Judge Philip Volland erred in allowing the jurors to hear information about her work as a stripper. It made her out to be a manipulative, cunning seductress who would murder for money, and it was the dominant theme of the trial, they said. State lawyers argue the evidence about dancing was relevant because the jurors had to understand how she met the victim and Carlin.

Shortly after Leppink’s death, Linehan left Alaska for college, earned a master’s degree, married a doctor, started a family and settled in Olympia. She was arrested in 2006. Her husband, Colin Linehan, lives in Olympia.

She is held at Hiland Mountain Correctional Center in Eagle River.