This is the second installment in our investigation of how Jefferson County Prosecutor Micahel Haas handled the case of State of Washington v. Patrick J. McAllister.  Our first report is here:  Part 1.   Also relevant:  The Questions Michael Haas Won’t Answer.

The rape victim did not object to her accused rapist being released without bond.  Hard to believe this could come from the same woman who says that man had raped and assaulted her repeatedly and she lived in constant fear of him.

It made it sound like perhaps she wasn’t telling the truth about what had happened in that small Brinnon house in April 2010.

But that’s what Prosecutor Michael Haas told the court when Patrick McAllister was being arraigned in the Fall of 2017.  He had been convicted five years earlier of 31 counts of the rape and assault of SL, a young Filipino woman he had brought into the country to be his wife.  He was sentenced to 250 months imprisonment.  After a series of appeals upholding his conviction, a panel of the Court of Appeals reversed and sent the matter back to Jefferson County Superior Court. Haas assigned himself the retrial.  He knew the case.  He had lost the argument in the Court of Appeals.

Had SL’s fear dissipated that she cared so little about McAllister being released from custody?  We asked her.

She said when she learned from a victim advocate that McAllister had been released, “I felt like I was in the ocean, being taken out, away into the water.”

But had she told Haas she did not object to a no-bail release for McAllister?

“No! He never talk with me until a little before the deposition.”

That deposition, in which Haas allowed an investigator hired by McAllister’s lawyer to interrogate SL about her current boyfriend (eight years after the incident), a boyfriend in the Philippines before the alleged rapes and the age at which her menstruation began, occurred March 16, 2018.

One Way Street to Dismissal

According to SL and a review of Haas’ emails, he let eight months pass before he spoke with her.  He refused her request to meet in person to help her prepare for a deposition about events she had spent years trying to forget.

But Haas had plenty of communication and friendly lunches with McAllister’s defense lawyer, John Cain of Tacoma. They hit it off after meeting at the Court of Appeals in May 2017.  Their relationship went beyond the professional respect of men who were supposed to be adversaries.  Haas gave Cain and his investigator a tour of the courthouse clocktower.  Cain offered to help Haas build a Wikipedia page.  They shared stories of their personal medical challenges. In an email dated March 23, Cain thanks Haas for a gift of cheese.

Cain offered to buy Haas lunch after SL’s deposition, “My treat.”  Haas joked, “I love to eat—probably too much.”

Haas once joked he hoped to kick Cain’s ass at trial.  Cain, who is decades older and more experienced, sent him a video clip from The Seven Samurai in which a master swordsman cautions an upstart novice not to challenge him with real steel, only to have to kill the fool when he did not back off.  The message was not lost on Haas.  He quickly apologized, saying he hoped he “had not come across as that arrogant.”

It was as though Haas were trying to please McAllister’s attorney.  He spent nearly a year filling defense requests, apologizing when he was tardy.  The correspondence fails to show a single instance of Haas building his own case.  He made not a single request of the defense.  He never objected to anything the defense wanted.  Instead, from the beginning he undermined the prosecution, telling Cain he doubted his case and would consider prosecuting SL for perjury—without ever having spoken with her.

Haas agreed to orders drafted by Cain that took effect unless SL came to court and filed her own objections to stop personal and intimate records from being disclosed.  He agreed to a defense request for Dove House domestic violence shelter records without bothering to first check with Dove House and learn domestic violence shelters were protected under a specific statute.  Dove House was forced to hire its own lawyer.  The executive director sent a letter to the court excoriating Haas for being poorly informed about Washington law.

Haas agreed to let the defense have photographs of SL’s genitals, taken at her sexual assault examination, without any prohibition against the photos being seen by her accused rapist.  SL only learned at her deposition that the photographs had been turned over.

When Cain got what he wanted he flattered Haas.  For instance, after Haas agreed to the order for disclosure of Dove House records—which put the onus on SL to bring her own motion if she objected—Cain told Haas, “The citizens of Jefferson County really do not know how luck[y] they are to have a prosecutor who cooperates with Defense on matters such as this.” “You’re too kind,” Haas responded.

Meanwhile, Haas never told SL or her sister, whom Haas listed as a witness for his case-in-chief, to make arrangements to come to Port Townsend for trial.  SL’s sister lives 3,000 miles away.

Cain worked Haas incessantly, insisting the McAllister was an innocent man who deserved to be left alone.  He attacked SL’s veracity and integrity, called Haas’ predecessor “corrupt,” and suggested that the Sheriff’s office was hiding information, not only from the defense, but from Haas as well.

Not once did Haas point out that McAllister would have a rough time if he took the stand and was anything but an innocent man.  McAllister had a federal conviction for lying to immigration authorities when he brought SL into the country.  He had pled guilty.  He had admitted to being a liar.  McAllister had denied assaulting two other woman only to be proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.  He was subject to protective orders from four other women, was alleged to have raped three more he picked up at AA meetings, had been arrested for rape in Kitsap County, and had a string of other convictions for assault, theft and resisting arrest in Pierce County, Oregon and elsewhere. Only about a year had passed between McAllister pleading guilty to assault with sexual motivation and SL calling 911 for police to get her out of his house, the same house where that earlier sexual assault had occurred. (More on this in a coming installment).

McAllister’s house, as it appeared in 2015

March 6, 2018, Haas Finally Speaks with SL

With trial around the corner, when he finally did speak to SL, Haas discovered that she just might be telling the truth.  He emailed Cain that “she came across as very credible.”  Haas had been on the verge of dismissing.  Now he couldn’t.  SL would come for a deposition, even though he would not meet her beforehand to help her prepare.  “For better or worse,” he told his opposing counsel, the case was going to trial.

But he was soon back to undermining a case he had not prepared for trial.  In moving for dismissal, he told the court he “could not ignore” a polygraph examination of McAllister that showed him passing, even though the results could not be admitted into evidence and he had been cautioned by the Sheriff’s polygraph expert not to rely on the results in making any decision (something Haas did not share with the court).  On April 25, by email, he notified SL he was dropping all charges against Patrick McAllister.

When a victim advocate reached her with the news, SL remembers asking, “Can I have another prosecutor?”

Next:  Alone and Unprotected

To read the full series, here all the installments:

Part I of Dumping a Rape Case and Its Victim

Part II:  Just read the story above

Part III Alone and Unprotected

The Conclusion on how Haas threw away evidence that McAllister’s defense was a fraud

Also: The Questions Michael Haas Won’t Answer