Former state Rep. Gabrielle LeDoux, left, testifies in her trial over voter misconduct and other election-law charges, while Superior Court Judge Kevin Saxby presides. LeDoux attorney Kevin Fitzgerald, seated, and Chief Assistant Attorney General Jenna Gruenstein, standing, are seen from behind. (Photo by Andrew Kitchenman/Alaska Beacon)
The criminal case against former Alaska state Rep. Gabrielle LeDoux focused on whether she pressured people to vote in her district when they lived elsewhere, and closing arguments in her trial on Wednesday zeroed in on what the law says about where voters should register.
After seven days of arguments in the trial, the jury will begin its deliberations on Friday morning, after Anchorage Superior Court Judge Kevin Saxby gave them their instructions at the end of the day on Wednesday.
LeDoux, an Anchorage Republican, was charged in 2020 with voter misconduct and unlawful interference with voting during the 2018 primary and general election campaigns. She faces five felony charges and seven misdemeanor charges.
The trial was delayed four times, most recently in July, when prosecutors disclosed additional evidence right before the trial was scheduled to start.
Chief Assistant Attorney General Jenna Gruenstein said Lisa Simpson, who was a friend and aide to LeDoux, and Simpson’s son Caden Vaught put the wrong addresses on their voter registrations due to pressure from LeDoux. She noted that Simpson said she wouldn’t have done it without messages from LeDoux about the registrations.
“Rules are important. Normal citizens know that. Lawyers know that. Lawmakers know that — or they should,” Gruenstein told the jurors. “Ms. LeDoux broke those rules. She wanted votes and she was willing to get them however she needed to. At this point, the state is asking you that she be held accountable for those rules that she broke, for those laws that she broke.”
LeDoux’s defense attorney Kevin Fitzgerald said the prosecution was wrong to link LeDoux to mistakes made by Simpson and Vaught. LeDoux only asked them to follow what she understood the law to be, he said.
“She believed that what it is that she was requesting of people was entirely appropriate based on the information that she had,” Fitzgerald said, later adding: “The state hasn’t proved beyond a reasonable doubt — the highest standard known to mankind — that she had the requisite mental state and acts. And as a result of that, we would ask, at the conclusion of your deliberations, to return the only true and just verdict, which is not guilty to all counts.”
LeDoux was a House member from 2005 to 2009, when she lived in and represented Kodiak, and from 2013 to 2021, when she represented an Anchorage district that included portions of both the Muldoon neighborhood and Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson.
LeDoux takes the stand
LeDoux testified for much of Wednesday, saying she understood at the time that Simpson and Vaught’s legal residences for voting were in her House district.
LeDoux worked as a lawyer for decades, with a focus on personal-injury plaintiffs related to maritime law.
Gruenstein attempted to establish various facts about LeDoux’s legal background, and received a series of negative answers from LeDoux: She hadn’t tried cases, did not have to deal much with regulations and didn’t generally advise clients on interpreting laws. And when Gruenstein asked whether LeDoux helped write laws as a legislator, she responded by saying laws are generally drafted by attorneys with the Legislative Legal office.
“I was actually surprised with how little being a lawyer actually helped in the Legislature,” LeDoux said.
At one point, Gruenstein ended a question to LeDoux by saying: “Voters don’t get to choose which district to vote in. There are rules that establish which district they’re supposed to vote in.”
LeDoux responded: “OK.”
Allegations of inappropriate arguments
The lawyers’ arguments turned into an exchange of accusations of inappropriate actions, after Gruenstein objected to how Fitzgerald characterized the state law defining the address Alaskans should use in their voter registration.
Fitzgerald focused on a portion of the law about the importance of a person’s intent to live at a place in the future. Gruenstein objected, saying it was wrong to focus on just that provision of the law, when the entire law requires that a person already have lived at an address.
After the jury left the room, Fitzgerald told Saxby that Gruenstein acted inappropriately by objecting to how he described the law, saying the judge had already said he would be allowed to present his and LeDoux’s interpretation of the law to the jury.
“The idea that there would be an objection that would telegraph to the jury that what it is that I was describing, but more importantly, what it is that my client believed with regard to the law is entirely inappropriate and, frankly, disturbing,” he said.
Gruenstein said Fitzgerald’s statement “was pretty personally attacking and I don’t think it was warranted.” She said her objection was based on Saxby’s own ruling about the residency law, and Fitzgerald’s criticism of her objection was “unfair and inappropriate.”
Saxby said he didn’t see bad faith arguments on either side, but found “vigorous representation on both sides.”
GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.