Public Radio for Alaska's Bristol Bay
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Tinker Acquitted in Sexual Assault Trial

It took a jury of twelve less than an hour to acquit Nicholas Tinker of Aleknagik on a charge of second degree sexual assault at a trial this week in Dillingham. KDLG’s Dave Bendinger has more:

Audio transcript

Surrounded by family and friends, 34-year-old Nicholas Tinker from Aleknagik broke into tears as the jury delivered the not-guilty verdict Tuesday.

One juror also cried. Amongst the twelve was a former police officer, a coordinator for the VPSO program in Bristol Bay, and the first person from Togiak to sit on a Dillingham jury.

The second degree sexual assault charge, indicted last June, stemmed from an incident alleged to have happened in September 2012. Dillingham police investigated the allegation that Tinker had sex with a woman he knew to be incapacitated on his fishing boat at the boat harbor. A small group had gone back to their boats after drinking at the bar that September weekend.

The case against Tinker was shaky from the get-go. A charge was first filed in April 2013 and immediately dismissed by the prosecutor. Then an Anchorage grand jury indicted Tinker in June, and he was arrested.

No part of the trial went favorably for the prosecution.

Tinker was represented by attorney Liz Pederson from the Bethel public defender's office. In her closing arguments Tuesday, Pederson highlighted the consistent string of inconsistencies from the woman who alleged the rape.

“She sat across the table from a uniformed police officer, and lied and lied and lied. She lied about what happened at the beginning of the night, she lied about what happened in the middle, she lied about who she was and wasn’t with, she lied about where she went, she lied about what she had to drink. She lied the whole time.”

The state argued that DNA evidence proved the two had sexual contact that night, and that Tinker later lied about that himself in a secretly monitored phone call months later. Pederson characterized the interaction as a "drunken one night stand" between two adults who had left the bar together and had been hugging and kissing through the evening.

Pederson eviscerated the case, hammering the prosecutor’s office and especially the lackluster investigation done by former Dillingham police officer Travis Schiaffo.

“If a good investigation had been done, we wouldn’t be here. It would have shown she was lying. This case was originally reported to a sergeant. It’s clear from his statement that he didn’t entirely trust what she was saying ... he wasn’t sure about her story. I wonder if Mr. Schiaffo had known the person on the receiving end of Ms. --- 's dubious story, whether he would have worked a little harder. But Mr. Tinker’s bad luck: sergeant Schiaffo was in the process of becoming mister Schiaffo, and he did nothing.”

Pederson even managed to more or less put the woman who had alleged the rape on trial herself.

“What is perfectly clear about what she did and the way that she told the story in this case is that she did not care what happened to Mr. Tinker. He didn’t factor for her at all. He was nothing ... garbage. She didn’t care that her words could and would eventually bring so much pain. The fear, the dread, the humiliation of the last nine months ... living under the specter of this allegation ... living with the knowledge of what her lies could permanently do to his life. And those lies were relied on by a lot of people. Nobody questioned, and on we went.”

On a charge of sexual assault in the second degree, the state had to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the victim was incapacitated and that the defendant knew it.

It took the jury less time to deliberate and acquit than it took the attorneys to make their closing arguments.