Why Are Hundreds of Criminal Cases Being Dismissed in Anchorage? — ProPublica

On May 1, a man in Anchorage, Alaska, called 911 to say he had “beat” his wife, according to a court document supporting an assault charge against him. When police stepped through the door of Vernon Booth’s apartment, they found the victim’s face bloody and her eye nearly swollen shut, the prosecution said.

You’re late, the charging document says he told officers. “She could have been dead by now.”

Four months later, prosecutors dropped the charge. It wasn’t because police made a mistake that got evidence tossed or because a jury found the defendant not guilty. Instead: The city said it did not have enough lawyers to take the man to trial. (Booth declined to comment on the case.)

Defendants in at least 930 Anchorage misdemeanor cases have walked free for this reason since May 1, the Anchorage Daily News and ProPublica found. These include people accused of crimes ranging from violating a restraining order to driving drunk with children in the backseat.

In one case, prosecutors said a mother told police she’d beaten her 5-year-old daughter with a belt. The prosecution said the girl, who was found with bruises across her back, told police she’d also been struck with a wire and a stick.

Dismissed.

Prosecutors accused one man of animal cruelty after he allegedly punched and choked a dog, while another allegedly raised fighting roosters found tied to barrels.

Dismissed.

More than 270 DUI cases.

Dismissed.

A grand total of three defendants have gone to trial since May, according to the city.

The cascade of failed prosecutions is especially disturbing in a state with the nation’s highest rate of women killed by men. More than 250 of the cases dismissed since May included charges of domestic violence assault, such as men allegedly punching, kicking or threatening to kill their wives or girlfriends. They include charges dropped against a state official accused of elbowing his then-girlfriend in the nose.

Two factors are at work in the mass dismissals. First, Alaska’s overloaded court system has limped along for years by allowing extensive trial delays, defying a state requirement for speedy trials. Second, the Anchorage prosecutor’s office, as in many American cities and states, is struggling to hold onto lawyers.

When a judge this year tried to clear out a backlog of Anchorage misdemeanors by having them brought forward as a group to regularly check which ones were ready for trial, defense attorneys pounced. They began demanding speedy-trial rights for their clients. The city couldn’t keep up. Cases started dying.

City officials say they’re aware of the problem. They have raised prosecutor pay and are hiring attorneys to take more cases to trial, in hopes the prosecutor’s office will be “fully back in action” in three to four months, according to City Attorney Eva Gardner.

Mayor Suzanne LaFrance, who took office July 1, said her transition team knew the lack of prosecutors was a problem, but she was surprised by the number of dropped cases.

“Right now, the prosecutors are frustrated, the police are frustrated. The public is frustrated. Victims are frustrated,” she said in an interview. “We see that. I see that, and this is something that we are working to fix.”

Angela Garay, executive director of the state’s Office of Victims’ Rights, told an Anchorage judge in July that the city is doing wrong by people who call the police on abusers.

“This is unacceptable for victims to have cases dismissed because prosecutors can’t do their jobs,” Garay said.

At a hearing in which city prosecutors dropped two dozen cases, she warned that she planned to open an investigation if the mass dismissals continued.

“We’re Not Going to Hold You Accountable”

The widespread failure to prosecute crimes has stayed largely below the public’s radar because the charges are misdemeanors — which in Anchorage, home to 39% of Alaskans, are pursued by city prosecutors rather than the state. Despite the low profile of these cases, they include allegations of serious, sometimes outrageous acts.

At least 70 cases of child neglect or abuse have been dismissed since May.

And, at a time when Anchorage drivers are killing pedestrians at a record pace, the city has dismissed hundreds of drunken driving charges.

A charging document described police finding one woman slumped over the wheel after her SUV crashed into another car. Two whiskey bottles lay on the floorboards, according to the charges. Although prosecutors said that the woman’s blood alcohol level tested at 4.6 times the limit and that she was on probation for a prior DUI when the crash happened, the city dropped the case. The 120-day speedy-trial deadline had expired the day before.

“I would say there’s absolutely no justice right now in our system,” said Anchorage attorney Kara Nyquist, who represents domestic violence victims.

Nyquist has a unique perspective because she was also named as the victim in multiple cases of stalking, trespassing and violating protective orders against a fellow Anchorage attorney.

Jacob Sonneborn and Nyquist had worked on opposing sides of family law cases, and Nyquist filed a request for a restraining order saying Sonneborn’s behavior became threatening. A judge granted the request. Emails that Sonneborn allegedly sent her afterward led prosecutors to charge him with violating the judge’s order, but they dropped the charges on Oct. 2 because of the speedy-trial deadline.

In an email to the Daily News and ProPublica, Sonneborn said two other cases against him were dismissed in August for reasons other than the speedy-trial deadline. He said that he believes he would have been acquitted had any of the charges against him gone to trial and that he never intended to harm Nyquist. “From my perspective, the whole series of charges alleging I violated bail conditions or the protective order were an abuse of the justice system,” he wrote.

The Alaska Supreme Court has temporarily suspended Sonneborn’s law license in connection with Nyquist’s allegations and complaints from other attorneys.

Nyquist now keeps a .38 Special pistol in her drawer and has armed staff members in her downtown Anchorage law firm with pepper spray and a Taser.

Nyquist said she recently had to tell a client that she couldn’t rely on the city to prosecute a pending domestic violence assault case, something she’s never had to do before in 24 years of practicing law.

“They’re going to cause a situation where it’s going to increase domestic violence,” she said, “because these perpetrators have now been told, ‘We’re not going to hold you accountable.’”

The city prosecutor’s office has said that about half the cases it handles involve domestic violence.

Among the domestic violence cases that have ended without a trial was the assault charge against the superintendent of a state youth detention center. Prosecutors said in charging documents that Darrell Garrison, head of the Mat-Su Youth Facility in Palmer, was recorded on video hitting his romantic partner in the face with his elbow.

The woman said in an interview that she thought he had broken her nose when the incident occurred. “I heard the crack,” she said. ”Three popping sounds.”

Garrison told police the blow was accidental, court documents say. Garrison remains superintendent of Mat-Su Youth Facility in Palmer, part of the state Department of Family and Community Services, where he oversees 14 counselors and 15 juveniles accused or convicted of crimes.

As months passed, Garrison began declaring himself ready to stand trial. His attorney, John Cashion, said that it was because Garrison was innocent and that the video evidence contradicted the claims in the charging document. He also filed papers saying if the case went to trial, he might argue self-defense.

“Look, if you’re falsely accused of a crime, what do you do? You say you’re ready for trial,” Cashion said.

But once the clock ran out for a speedy trial in August, Cashion said, it made sense for his client’s case to come to an end. “Why would anybody take a risk of actually saying, ‘Now let’s do the trial, now that I’m entitled to a dismissal,’” Cashion said.

The woman said she learned the case had been dismissed after looking it up on a public database. No one from the police department or prosecutor’s office called to tell her they were going to drop the charges, she said, despite a state law requiring alleged victims to be notified.

“It’s like they’re just sweeping it under the rug,” she said.

Lead prosecutor Dennis Wheeler, a former city attorney who agreed to return to Anchorage this year with an offer of $12,500 beyond the normal salary cap, said the volume of dismissals has indeed meant the city failed to notify some victims.

“We’ve definitely dropped the ball in some cases,” he said.

“People Have Caught On”

Anchorage is letting people free, in part, because of Alaska state court rules that say prosecutors must bring defendants before a jury within 120 days unless their attorneys grant extensions.

The deadline has proved impossible for the Anchorage prosecutor’s office to hit. The number of prosecutors dwindled from 13 in July 2021 to nine in July of this year. All but three as of July were new hires. Some of the most experienced lawyers on staff left.

The departures took place under the leadership of then-Mayor Dave Bronson, during a chaotic era of employee turnover at City Hall that has threatened other core services. But the city has also said previously it’s hard to compete with other private and public employers that can offer attorneys better pay.

City officials cited the office’s staffing as one of the struggles facing key departments as they transitioned from Bronson’s administration to that of the newly elected LaFrance in July. The police department predicted the consequences.

“Misdemeanor crimes are unlikely to be prosecuted due to low attorney staffing,” the department wrote at the time. “This adds to morale issues as officers see repeat offenders free.”

The ultimate stress test for the office came when judges early this year moved to clear out gridlock in Alaska’s court system.

The city cases took an average of 90 days to resolve before the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a Jan. 31 order by Anchorage Presiding Judge Thomas Matthews. By the time the judge issued his order, more than 1,500 city misdemeanor cases had sat more than a year on the court calendar.

Pretrial delays lasting years are a long-standing problem in state court, while delays in Anchorage misdemeanor cases appear to be a more recent development.

To speed things up, Matthews ordered judges to end pretrial delays for misdemeanor charges filed before this year “unless the parties provide a good cause basis”; no more than three delays would be allowed in 2024 cases. Another judge started moving cases to weekly sessions known as “trial calls,” where the two sides declare whether they are ready to proceed.

Dozens of cases showed up every Wednesday. If every defense attorney refused further delays for defendants nearing or crossing their 120-day speedy-trial deadlines, the city would have to mount trials in all these cases at once. The attorneys saw an easy way to help their clients. They flooded the city with requests to go to trial.

“Yes, people have caught on, and yes, people are calling their bluffs, that is true,” said Amanda Lancaster, who works for a firm that provides public defender services. “I don’t think people are doing that in terms of like, malpractice. But certainly, people have figured out that trend.”

Matthews put the responsibility on the city in an interview with the Daily News and ProPublica, saying he was shocked to learn the number of domestic violence cases the city had dismissed because of speedy-trial deadlines. “It’s like: ‘Really? You aren’t prioritizing this?’” Matthews said.

“I don’t think it was ever our intention to have the city simply taking cases and throwing them out the window without looking at them,” he said.

Ugly Numbers

City officials say they have been working hard to turn things around.

“The numbers are ugly — both the dismissal numbers and the turnover rate in the office,” said Gardner, the new city attorney hired shortly after LaFrance took office as mayor in July.

Gardner said the prosecutor’s office has prioritized domestic violence and drunken driving cases when enough prosecutors are available to go to trial. But cases that make it to court have been few and far between.

Gardner said work on a fix began under the former mayor. The Anchorage Assembly approved 20% pay increases for prosecutors and other municipal attorneys in 2023.

Gardner said that, in addition, her predecessor and the city’s lead prosecutor met with state officials on April 30 to ask for help prosecuting cases but that the state did not provide assistance.

The deputy attorney general in charge of criminal prosecutions for the state, John Skidmore, said the meeting did not involve any ask for help with caseloads.

“On April 30 there was NOT an ask for help from the state with cases, and certainly not help with DV cases,” Skidmore said in an email to the Daily News and ProPublica. “Nor am I aware of any subsequent request for help.”

Gardner said the city has considered hiring prosecutors on contract to avoid dropping cases but ultimately decided it was not practical. Alaska lacks a law school, she said, and the pool of private attorneys with prosecution experience is small. Contract prosecutors would need to receive special training and clearance to handle confidential criminal justice information, a process that takes 30 to 60 days.

The city has focused instead on recruiting permanent, full-time hires and retaining current prosecutors. The office is back up to 12 line prosecutors plus the lead, Wheeler. Five of the attorneys on staff are new to the practice.

In explaining its special $175,000 offer to Wheeler in August, the Anchorage Assembly said the city’s failure to prosecute cases “has had significant impacts on public safety and contributed to a perception that wrongdoers in the Municipality face no consequences.”

LaFrance has asked for an additional $75,000 for raises and higher salaries for new hires in her 2025 budget proposal — an effort to boost retention and recruitment.

Gardner said the recent hiring efforts are starting to pay off, and prosecutors are beginning to schedule more trials.

“Unfortunately, it’s not something that can be fixed overnight,” she said. “Fortunately, we knew this coming in.”

A Frustrating Marathon

Inside the courtroom where Anchorage misdemeanor cases get dropped week after week, measuring time on the speedy-trial clock is a tedious but essential task.

Defendants who showed up in person — many are free on bail — get to go first, followed by attorneys for clients who are absent.

The city prosecutors often don’t know which of their cases are nearing the 120-day deadline, the Daily News and ProPublica found when sitting in on three recent trial call sessions. A defense attorney will claim it’s about to expire, and the judge will make a quick calculation from the bench. In some cases, it turns out the countdown expired weeks earlier. In others, the city only had a day or two left to take the case to trial.

Almost always, the defense asks for a trial. In a defeated tone, the prosecutor asks the judge to toss out the case.

During these marathon case dismissals, defendants sometimes express surprise or delight to learn the charges against them have been tossed out. The voices of victims are almost never heard.

On a day in September, when District Judge David Wallace dismissed 31 cases at the city’s request, veteran city prosecutor Tyler Wright took a moment hours into the process and chatted with the judge about an upcoming trip. Wright said he was quitting the prosecutor’s office to work in private practice.

It’s been a discouraging few months, Wright acknowledged in response to a reporter’s question later on, after the courtroom emptied.

“It’s frustrating for everybody. Everybody involved. Judges, the court clerks, the prosecutors,” Wright said.

Wallace overheard Wright and completed his sentence from the bench: “The victims, the witnesses, police officers.” Wright added to it further. “The entire city,” he said.

Within weeks, the prosecutor was gone, replaced at the Wednesday court hearings by another city attorney.

He carried with him a list of 100 cases to dismiss.