The case against a former Juneau chiropractor accused of assaulting more than a dozen women under the guise of medical care may continue into another year.
At a hearing Wednesday, the defense attorney said he would likely not be ready to go to trial until 2027.
Listen:
Jeffrey Fultz went on trial last year, more than four years after he was arrested for alleged assaults spanning from 2014 to 2020 while he was employed at Southeast Alaska Regional Health Consortium. The trial lasted six weeks and ended in two counts not guilty, and a deadlocked jury on a dozen other counts. Two other counts were declared mistrial earlier in the trial as well. Larry Woolford, the judge in the case, later dismissed one more charge.
In total, Fultz still faces thirteen counts of assault, which he can be tried for again. But the court hasn’t scheduled a new trial yet.
The court assigned Fultz a public defender in October, Juneau’s Nico Ambrose. Private attorney James Christie represented Fultz for the last two years, and through the trial last summer. Ambrose is Fultz’s third defense attorney since his 2021 arrest.
Ambrose said in court Wednesday that the last seven months haven’t been enough time to prepare for trial. Stacking his table in the courtroom with binders and boxes of papers, he said he likely won’t be ready until next year.
“It’s hard to kind of envision what I’m talking about, if I’m just saying it,” he said. “But I brought over all of this material to kind of show this is what I mean. And this is not everything.”
Prosecutor Krystyn Tendy argued that the state has to do the same amount of work as the defense. She said she came into the case shortly before the first trial.
“The defendant is entitled to representation,” she said. “He is entitled to competent representation, and he is not entitled to the absolute, perfect epitome of the greatest attorney that ever existed. He is entitled to the same representation that every other defendant is entitled to.”
Tendy asked for a trial date to be set.
“The state will be ready,” she said. “This cannot keep going. At this point, Your Honor needs to set a trial date. We need to move forward.”
Ambrose said his preparations are intended to meet the ethical standard to represent Fultz to the best of his ability.
“Making reasonable requests for time to go through things, file motion practice, hire experts and litigate a case is not perfect lawyering,” he said. “It’s what lawyers have to do to further their ethical obligations of zealous advocacy and effective representation.”
Ambrose asked to meet next in October. Woolford weighed the two sides’ opposing requests, referencing an Alaska Supreme Court ruling that placed limits on further delays in cases from before 2022.
According to the ruling, Courts could only extend cases a maximum of 270 days, 90 days by each party and the court each. That countdown started in May of 2025, when that ruling took effect. Cases can only be delayed further if “extraordinary circumstances exist and that the delay is indispensable to the interest of justice.”
“I think I have said several times in the past that in some ways this case is its own extraordinary circumstance,” he said.
Woolford pointed to the amount of evidence in the case.
“It is a difficult balance to strike,” he said. “But as I said, I’m not willing to kick this down the road until October.”
Instead, the judge chose a compromise and set the next hearing for July 15 at the Dimond Courthouse in Juneau.
Aside from timing, another issue is still outstanding. At a hearing in April, Ambrose said he was considering filing a motion to change the venue of the retrial from Juneau to Anchorage. He has not filed that motion but said Wednesday he is still planning to.
Correction: This story has been updated with the total number of assault counts Fultz still faces.
