Jury deliberates in lawsuit over Hoonah officers’ deaths

JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) - The man convicted of shooting two Hoonah police officers to death in 2010 was the last witness in a civil lawsuit claiming the officers’ training was flawed.

John Nick Marvin Jr., who is serving two consecutive 99-year sentences in the deaths of Officer Matthew Tokuoka, 39, and Sgt. Tony Wallace, 32, on Friday invoked his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination and refused to answer questions. He is appealing his conviction and spoke only to confirm his name, the Juneau Empire (https://bit.ly/1FCtOJY) reported.

“I, John Marvin, refuse and plead the Fifth,” Marvin said before he was sworn in.

Tokuoka’s widow, Haley Tokuoka-Yearout, in a wrongful death lawsuit claims that Wallace made several mistakes that led to the shootings, including shining a light into Marvin’s home, and that the city is to blame for not training Wallace adequately.

Attorneys for the city say Marvin alone is at fault for the killings.

After listening to closing arguments, jurors began deliberations and will continue Monday.

The officers were shot after Wallace, who was driving with his visiting mother, performed a fake traffic stop on Tokuoka and his family.

Tokuoka-Yearout’s attorney, Mark Choate, told jurors that Wallace knew Marvin was emotionally disturbed but provoked him anyway. Wallace unnecessarily flashed the overhead lights of his police vehicle near Marvin’s house and shined a flashlight into Marvin’s home.

“Tony was simply goofing around,” Choate said. “He simply was being a prankster and a jokester. And probably nine times out of 10, 99 out of 100, nothing bad would happen. But when you deal with life-and-death situations, when you deal with people you know can be violent and emotionally disturbed, you can’t (do) that. You simply can’t.”

Attorney Frank Koziol, representing Hoonah, said blaming the officer made as much sense as blaming Martin Luther King Jr. for his murders.

“Would we blame Martin Luther King for his murder because of his desire to improve civil rights for blacks?” he asked the jury. “. The killer is 100 percent responsible for the murders. John Marvin is 100 percent responsible for the murders of these two officers.”

The shootings were a “revenge killing” for Marvin’s prior run-in with police, Koziol said.

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Information from: Juneau (Alaska) Empire, https://www.juneauempire.com