ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Mechele Linehan, convicted in the 1996 murder of Kent Leppink and awaiting a second trial, has been approved for bail.
Superior Court Judge Philip Volland — the same judge that presided at her first trial — approved bail in the amount of $250,000 on Wednesday.
That means that Linehan will have to come up with $25,000, money that her lawyer said would be hard to come by. On Tuesday, Linehan asked for a public defender for her second trial. Volland said he’d rule on that request next week.
Volland in 2007 told her she had committed “a heinous crime” and sentenced her to a maximum 99 years in prison for the murder of a former fiance.
The Alaska Court of Appeals ruled that Volland made errors during the trial and threw out the conviction. The state is retrying her.
