"I don't have the same concerns as I did when I originally set bail," Volland said. "Ms. Linehan has a lot of incentive to stick around."
Linehan had her 2007 first-degree murder conviction in the death of Kent Leppink overturned earlier this year by the Alaska Court of Appeals, which cited errors during the trial in allowing certain evidence into record.
Now her case is older, and there is less evidence after John Carlin, who was convicted of shooting Leppink, was killed in prison.
"The effect of his death was that his conviction was extinguished… meaning he wasn't charged, he wasn't indicted, he wasn't tried and he wasn't convicted. And my sense of the case with Ms. Linehan was that it was built on the foundation of John Carlin's conviction," Volland said.
Volland granted bail on the condition that she be in the custody of a third party at all times and not leave the Anchorage area. Three people: her husband, a former coworker and an Anchorage woman who became friends with Linehan, were approved as custodians.
When asked why she offered to be a third-party custodian, Barbara Sheridan, the woman who befriended Linehan after her conviction, said, "I followed the case very carefully, I've read the court transcripts, I felt that we had done her a disservice and no one else was stepping forward, so I'm doing it."
Kent Leppink's father thinks her bail should be set higher.
"It's not shoplifting. It should be handled like first degree murder," Ken Leppink said.
Linehan has a pretrial meeting May 11.
Contact Rebecca Palsha at rpalsha@ktuu.com
