Wildlife facility animal cruelty case to be heard by Haines jury as owner pitches $1.5M settlement

Former wildlife facility owner Steve Kroschel. (Chilkat Valley News photo)

By Will Steinfeld

Chilkat Valley News

The animal cruelty case against Steve Kroschel will be heard by a local jury in the Haines courthouse, likely after the new year.  

Kroschel, who for decades ran a wildlife facility in Mosquito Lake popular with locals and tourists, was charged just over a year ago with multiple counts of animal cruelty after state troopers raided his property and seized many of his animals.

In the interim, Kroschel traveled to Russia and did not return for mandatory pretrial hearings, which prompted the court to put out a warrant for his arrest.  

Kroschel did not return until August, citing to the court a foreign government’s refusal to allow him to leave to justify his absence, Superior Court Judge Amy Mead said.

While in Russia, Kroschel told the Chilkat Valley News he was applying for asylum with the Russian government, and said government officials there told him if he left the country he would not be able to return. 

Now that Kroschel has returned, he’ll stand trial, and he has requested that it happen in Haines, even though the case is being heard in Juneau Superior Court. There is no judge based in Haines, only a District Court magistrate.

Mead, who is presiding over the case, has granted Kroschel’s request, and will travel to Haines for the trial. 

The state’s prosecutor bringing the case, Matthew Kaste, has also agreed. 

“Because Mr. Kroschel has asked for it, we should at least try to get the trial started in Haines,” Kaste said during a pretrial hearing Thursday. 

Kroschel, in an email Friday, said he cannot afford to travel to and stay in Juneau, and neither can many of his witnesses. 

Mead warned both Kaste and Kroschel attorney Benjamin Dresner that the Haines courtroom would present logistical challenges due to its size, including tight quarters for jurors, proximity of jurors to the counsel tables — where the attorneys sit — and the proximity of the counsel tables to each other.

Both Kaste and Dresner said they were fine with the conditions. 

There has not yet been a date scheduled for the trial, but Mead has proposed tentative dates in mid-January. There is another pretrial hearing this month, on Oct. 22, at which trial dates may be set.

State law guarantees criminal defendants the right to a speedy trial, defined as a trial within 120 days of charges being filed. That’s been complicated in Kroschel’s case by his stay in Russia and missed hearings, which paused the 120-day clock. There’s some debate about when the clock restarted this summer. Under one calculation, the latest a trial could be held is December 24. Kaste, however, has argued to the court that the 120 day clock be reset due to Kroschel’s “extended absence,” Mead said. Both lawyers will be submitting arguments to the court on the speedy trial issue within the next week. 

While the court works its way through official proceedings, Kroschel is simultaneously releasing public videos on social media discussing the case. In a video Friday, he made an offer to the state in which the Alaska Department of Fish and Game would “admit no wrongdoing” and the state of Alaska would pay him $1.5 million. In return, Kroschel offered to never again own animals in the United States.

• This article originally appeared in the Chilkat Valley News.