As summer approaches, it will bring to nearly five years the length of time that has passed since the federal government raided the Anchorage offices of several state lawmakers, exposing publicly for the first time and in a big way that Alaska politicians had been under scrutiny for abusing their power in exchange for money.

The inquiries yielded federal criminal charges and convictions against businessmen, lobbyists and six politicians, including the late U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens. But of the dozen criminal cases brought forward, three have been thrown out as a result of the government’s decision to keep hidden from view evidence that could have helped the defense teams. Mistakes were so bad in the Stevens case that the Justice Department chose to drop the case altogether. And, it’s unknown whether the government will make a second attempt at convictions against Pete Kott and Vic Kohring, who were freed from jail over the evidentiary mess and earlier this year won the right to new trials from an appeals court.

Yet Kott and Kohring are not alone in waiting for some semblance of closure in an investigation and series of cases that has not only had dramatic upheavals but also saw two people on opposing sides die waiting for final vindication.

Strange though it may seem, Kott and Kohring are hoping to avoid a second chance to prove their innocence. They’d much prefer the cases simply go away once and for all. While the justices of the higher court did indeed call for new trials for the men, attorneys for Kott and Kohring are pushing for a chance to have the court rule that prosecutors screwed up so badly that the only way to make things right is to throw the cases out.

The standard for making such decisions is whether the government's attorneys acted "flagrantly, willfully, or in bad faith," something only one judge on the 9th Circuit's three-judge panel thought had occurred. Kott and Kohring’s defense teams say there’s a good reason the court’s majority didn’t find enough evidence of bad prosecutorial conduct to toss the case: Prosecutors continue to hide the very evidence that could prove why and how frequently they failed in their duties, according to the men’s attorneys.

In an effort to get the full picture, Kott and Kohring have gone back to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and asked to revisit the issue. Only through an evidentiary hearing will the answers come out, they argue.

The list of Kott and Kohring’s unanswered questions largely hinge on whether a star witness had reasons to lie on the stand and what lengths prosecutors went to keep information that could have discredited him under wraps. Bill Allen, the government's main witness in the cases, was at one point investigated for sexually exploiting minors and encouraged at least one of the young women to lie about it. But according to the defense teams, evidence exists that suggests federal prosecutors told Anchorage police to back off the case.

Had Kott or Kohring had the opportunity to question Allen about this revelation during their trials, it could have discredited his testimony.

Allen and another trial witness, Rick Smith, also gave inconsistent statements about how much money traded hands and the reasons behind it. Yet investigators only shared with the defense interviews that reinforced the prosecution’s corruption and bribery narrative, according to an analysis of the cases by the appeals judge who thought the cases should be thrown out.

At issue now is how much the trial team knew about any withheld evidence and how far up the chain of command that knowledge went. To find out, Kott and Kohring's defense teams want the government to hand over any information relating to how the trial team made its decisions to suppress information the defense feels it was entitled to.

 An example cited by Kott attorney Sheryl Gordon McCloud details an email between prosecutor Nicholas Marsh and his superiors in the Justice Department's Public Integrity Section warning that Allen had, on the eve of trial, begun making statements about how "Pete was my friend" and "He never extorted me." But the full exchange remains heavily redacted, and McCloud wants to know more about the advice Marsh received.

McCloud also raised suspicions about the failure of the FBI to keep notes when its interviews with Allen didn’t go well.