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The chief justice of the Alaska Supreme Court told state lawmakers this week that the court system is taking steps to reduce the amount of time it takes criminal cases to reach trial, a problem highlighted by a recent ProPublica and Anchorage Daily News investigation.
In an annual State of the Judiciary speech to legislators Wednesday at the Capitol in Juneau, Chief Justice Susan M. Carney said the court system has increased training for judges, created new policies on postponements and authorized overtime pay. She noted that the court system’s mission includes deciding cases “expeditiously and with integrity.”
“You are probably aware that we are not meeting expectations — our own or Alaskans’ — about the expeditious part of that mission,” Carney said.
Noting “recent media accounts” of extreme delays, Carney said the state is gaining ground and that resolving the problem is “our No. 1 priority.”
“We must, and we will, improve how we handle criminal cases to prevent that kind of delay,” Carney said.
The Daily News and ProPublica reported in January that the most serious felony cases in Alaska can take five, seven or even 10 years to reach trial as judges approve dozens of delays. These delays might be requested because defense attorneys are waiting for prosecutors to share evidence or because attorneys have high caseloads to juggle, or even as a tactic to weaken the prosecution’s case with the passage of time.
The category of cases that ProPublica and the Daily News examined, the most serious felonies such as murders and violent sexual assaults, took the judicial system a median of three years to complete in 2023, a threefold increase from 2013.
The newsrooms identified one case that judges described as one of the most “horrendous” sexual assaults they had ever seen and that has been delayed at least 74 times over the course of 10 years.
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