Prosecutors won't seek charges in officer-involved shooting

JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — State prosecutors will not seek criminal charges against a Juneau police officer in the fatal shooting of a man last year, the Alaska Department of Law said Friday, refuting a claim that the officer had been “formulating” a plan to shoot the man.

Attorneys representing Kelly Stephens' parents last week requested the department's Office of Special Prosecutions re-evaluate its conclusion that the shooting by Officer James Esbenshade was legally justified.

In a letter to Jack McKenna, a chief assistant attorney general with the special prosecutions office, family attorney Ben Crittenden cited an excerpt from a police report he said described “in bone-chilling detail" Esbenshade talking to himself and “formulating” a plan to shoot Stephens if he found him. The family’s attorneys also cited video, taken from Esbenshade’s body camera, whose audio they had enhanced and transcribed.

But the Department of Law on Friday said the statements in the video “do not represent a premeditated plan to find and kill Mr. Stephens.”

Stephens had been accused of threatening a grocery store patron and swinging a long chain before the fatal shooting.

Officers at the scene of the grocery store incident late on Dec. 28 did not find Stephens, according to a March review by McKenna.

An excerpt of the police report released by the family's attorneys referenced Esbenshade driving around after conducting a witness interview after the grocery store incident and talking to himself, saying “something similar to: ‘you can’t come at me with that, that is a deadly weapon. I’d shoot you and drop you dead.’”

The excerpt says Esbenshade later stated, “you get one chance, you better make it good. Because when I get ahold of you... There’d be nothing...