Although a grand jury indicted Tallon Westlake for first degree, second degree, manslaughter, and evidence tampering in the death of his father, former Rep. Dean Westlake, an Anchorage jury acquitted him Monday on the first degree murder charge. The jury was hung on the other charges, however.
The death of Dean Westlake, who briefly represented District 40 out of Kotzebue, occurred Aug. 20, 2022, in what has been reported as a dispute over Tallon’s refusal to leave an apartment owned by Dean’s girlfriend on Rovenna St. in Anchorage.
Tallon was reportedly behind in rent and was being evicted by his father on behalf of his father’s girlfriend. Just before 7 a.m., Anchorage police received a call and arrived at the apartment with medics, who found Dean dead.
Officers said when they arrived, there were blood marks on hallway walls, kitchen cabinets, on Dean Westlake’s hands and feet, and on Tallon Westlake’s clothes. There was also a strong smell of bleach and evidence, including a mop, of an apparent attempt to clean the floor of blood. A bloody towel was found in the car outside, which belonged to Tallon.
Dean Westlake, age 62 at the time of his death, was elected in 2016 and resigned from the Legislature in 2017, after women in the Capitol accused him of sexual harassment; it was at the height of the #metoo movement, a time during which women were making lots of public accusations against men. It later became public that he had fathered a child with a 16-year-old girl in 1988, when he was 28 years old, which would have been indications of a sexual crime.
Dean was the Democrats’ pick to replace Barrow’s Rep. Ben Nageak, who chose to caucus with Republicans; at the time Republicans were in the majority and the Anchorage campaign team at Ship Creek Group was working to flip the House to Democrat control. Dean Westlake was one of the group’s first clients.
Tallon, now 38, faces the other charges, and the state may open a new trial, but won’t be able to retry him on first-degree murder. He is still in custody but his attorneys may ask for him to be released on bail and the state may ask for a retrial on the second-degree, manslaughter, and evidence-tampering charges.
Probably because of State presented it in a way Tallon action was a “heat of passion”
That the defendant wouldn’t had done it if some action and some conversation preceding it didn’t occur.
Parents of adult children you can’t kick you adult child out WHEN you and their early and k-12 education never prepared them. Its cruel. It’s not even loving. Sometimes disagreements happen in the heat and under pressure, pressure to kick the son out and the heat being very hurt to retaliate.
So the son is a dead beat, the dad tries to get him out of the unit so the girlfriend can get a renter so she can make her payments. Son kills dad because he thinks he is being treated unfairly. Spoiled kids grow up to be entitled adults. This guy will end up in jail eventually, no matter what. He doesn’t think he should have to do anything he doesn’t want to do. Blaming a parent for their own death at the hands of their off spring is crap. Free will, the one universal truth.
A couple of US Constitution thoughts: If the young man fought for his life and prevailed and a jury of his peers acquitted him he is not guilty by the adjudged verdict of his peers thus he is entitled to his immediate liberty. There is no such thing constitutionally as a hung jury. It is either yes guilty or no not guilty and try again later. You don’t get tried twice in America in our great republic for the same thing. The judgment of the community jury stands. We paid for that justice. There it is. That is why we are guaranteed a trial by a jury of our peers. They did their job. We literally need the judgments of our community juries every bit as the judgment of a noble in a black robe or private club members practicing law in the copious public sector or as a private law sayer in a private club. I believe such members all have a sworn oath to the British Monarchy such as it diffusedly is these days. The concept of hung juries is a popular migration from the actual foundational law of the American land law and foundational jurisprudence.
“It’s (always) someone else’s fault. Things just happen to me.”
~ Tallon
What was the composition of the jury?
We the people still have our constitutionally defined powers. The US Constitution still stands even if the corporation is bit shakey.. Like it or not communists.
That’s great, the state will release him now and he will be living in a homeless camp.
Lucky us.
We have an absolute right to defend our lives when attacked to death according to to the US Constitution. The jury did have to familiarize themselves with the facts of this case.
No equal human adult in America has the right to tell another equal human adult to do anything. There is a process for due for that. If that is not suitable or efficient to one North Korea might permit one to enter. They usually don’t accept foreign trespassers though.
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