This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with the Anchorage Daily News. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.
Alaska’s Supreme Court has placed new limits on how long criminal cases can be postponed, part of an effort to reduce the time many criminal defendants wait to face trial in the state.
The court’s order, which takes effect May 12, directs state judges to allow no more than 270 days of new delays for criminal cases filed in 2022 or before. Court system data shows that about 800 active cases fall into that category, making each one more than 800 days old and counting.
The move to reduce delays follows an investigation by ProPublica and the Anchorage Daily News that found some cases have taken as long as a decade to reach juries, potentially violating the rights of victims and defendants alike.
The time to resolve Alaska’s most serious felony cases, such as murder and sexual assault, has nearly tripled over the past decade. Victims rights advocates had long complained that judges rubber-stamped delays, particularly in Anchorage, where about half of the cases impacted by the Supreme Court order are pending. Some cases dragged on so long that victims or witnesses had died in the meantime.
In addition to capping the duration of delays, the state Supreme Court’s order says judges must explain why they’ve allowed any request for delay.
“It’s a positive step by the court to be able to work with the lawyers to move cases along,” said state Sen. Matt Claman, D-Anchorage, chair of the Judiciary Committee, which held a hearing on pretrial delays in February.
Alaska Court System spokesperson Rebecca Koford said the new Supreme Court order, issued on March 12, tackles the “most pressing concern.”
The time needed to close out the oldest cases “is exceedingly long,” she said, “and we need to get them resolved.”
The Supreme Court order said judges in pre-2023 cases are to allow only 90 days of new delays at the request of the defense, 90 days for prosecutors and 90 days for “other periods of delay for good cause.”
Koford said that an example of why a case might be delayed for good cause would be when a witness is temporarily unavailable to testify. Additional efforts are in the works to reduce the time it takes cases to get to trial, she said.
“We do not view it as the solution; it is part of the solution,” Koford said.
Alaska criminal rules grant defendants the right to a trial within 120 days of being charged with a crime. Crime victims have the right to the “timely disposition” of their case under the state constitution.
The 120-day deadline is rarely met. One sexual assault case highlighted by the Daily News and ProPublica was filed in 2014 and has been delayed more than 70 times.