This text was produced for ProPublica’s Native Reporting Community in partnership with the Anchorage Each day Information. Join Dispatches to get our tales in your inbox each week.
Anchorage Mayor Suzanne LaFrance stated this week that town has employed a full roster of prosecutors and is now not dropping felony prices as a consequence of quick staffing. The announcement comes 9 months after the Anchorage Each day Information and ProPublica reported the mass dismissals.
“Public security begins with accountability — and we can’t maintain individuals accountable if we don’t have prosecutors in court docket,” LaFrance stated in a information launch, asserting that Alaska’s largest metropolis has crammed all “frontline” prosecutor jobs for the primary time since 2020. “This was about greater than filling positions. It was about rebuilding the programs that maintain Anchorage secure.”
An investigation by the newsrooms, printed in October, discovered that metropolis prosecutors dropped a whole lot of misdemeanor instances as a result of there weren’t sufficient attorneys on the payroll. Between Could 1 and Oct. 2 of final yr, town dropped greater than 250 home violence assault instances and greater than 270 drunken driving instances as a consequence of an incapacity to satisfy the 120-day deadline Alaska units for upholding a defendant’s proper to a speedy trial.
Days after the investigation got here out, the state of Alaska introduced it might assist prosecute metropolis instances to keep away from speedy-trial dismissals.
However these state prosecutors are now not wanted. Based on town, the municipal prosecutor’s workplace now has a full employees of 12 “frontline” prosecutors who take instances to trial, plus a supervisor and an legal professional who information motions and appeals. The one emptiness, they stated, is a supervisory position: deputy municipal prosecutor.
That quantities to a emptiness price of about 7% within the prosecutor’s workplace. In distinction, greater than 40% of metropolis prosecutor positions had been vacant as of mid-2024, in accordance with a metropolis spokesperson.
At a Wednesday “trial name” listening to at downtown Anchorage’s Boney Courthouse, Assistant Municipal Prosecutor Andy Garbe introduced town was able to go to trial in case after case, together with a drunken driving arrest, weapons prices and home violence assaults. It was a far totally different scene from September, when prosecutors had been routinely compelled to drop prices in instances nearing the speedy-trial deadline.
“We’re not within the place we had been final fall,” Garbe stated, referring to the compelled dismissals. “That’s not occurring anymore.”
Metropolis prosecutors stated they’re nonetheless dismissing instances for causes apart from speedy-trial deadlines. For instance, on Wednesday, Garbe moved to dismiss two instances, together with a home violence assault, citing elements such because the weak point of the case and unavailable witnesses. A protection legal professional had warned the instances had been nearing the 120-day speedy-trial deadline, however Garbe stated the timing was not the rationale for the dismissals.
In Anchorage, metropolis prosecutors deal with misdemeanor instances whereas state attorneys usually prosecute felonies.
With probably the most critical felonies, the state has lengthy handled issues other than Anchorage’s mass dismissals. The newsrooms reported in January that a few of these instances are delayed so long as a decade earlier than reaching trial. In March, the Alaska Supreme Court docket issued a collection of orders aimed toward lowering delays.
District Court docket Choose Brian Clark cited the Supreme Court docket orders on Wednesday when asking attorneys in the event that they had been able to go to trial, noting the pending deadline.
