Crime & Courts

In a Juneau courtroom in January, a man calling in from Lemon Creek Correctional Center begged to go to trial. Phillip Drummer was charged with a domestic violence assault in December of 2023. The prosecutor was ready for trial, too. Drummer’s “right to a speedy trial” timeframe was closing. 

But his defense attorney, Rex Butler, didn’t have any space in his schedule because of all his other cases. 

Juneau District Attorney Whitney Bostick, who is prosecuting the case, said if Drummer wasn’t willing to wait six weeks for his attorney, he could represent himself.

“Ms. Bostick raised the possibility, Mr. Drummer, of you proceeding pro se, without an attorney, in this matter,” presiding Judge Larry Woolford told the defendant.

Drummer didn’t like that idea. 

“Your honor, this is totally not fair to me. I don’t understand why the court won’t make sure that I’m adequately represented,” he said. “Here I am pretty much being forced to have to either represent myself or wait another two months in jail.” 

At the end of the hearing, Judge Woolford decided it would be best to wait. 

“I think the only thing that makes sense is to set this for a date-certain trial to start March 3,” Woolford said. 

Pretrial delays leave victims and defendants in limbo

This hearing was a snapshot of how pretrial delays have affected Alaska courts: victims, witnesses and defendants are often waiting years for a resolution, and their lives are put on hold in the meantime. 

It also leaves untried defendants – people accused of crimes but presumed innocent until found otherwise by the court – sitting in jail.

Anchorage Daily News and ProPublica reported in January that these delays amount to extreme wait times for felony trials. The average wait to resolve felonies has almost tripled in Alaska in the past decade, from just over one year on average to close to three years.

The Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution says “In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury.”

It has two time limits: that an indictment, when a grand jury formally accuses the defendant of the crime, or an arraignment, when the defendant is told of what they are being charged with, must happen within a month of arrest, and that a trial must start within 120 days of the indictment or arraignment.

But the Constitution also allows for exceptions. 

Roughly half the people sitting in Alaska prisons are awaiting trial. It’s been that way for several years now – especially after the pandemic halted most jury trials for two years. 

Thatʼs about 2,000 individuals who are legally innocent. And according to the Alaska Department of Corrections, incarceration costs the state $200 per person per day. It costs the state roughly $400,000 per day to incarcerate people who have yet to be convicted. 

In February, more than half of the inmates in Juneau’s Lemon Creek Correctional Center hadn’t been sentenced yet. 

Alaska courts’ response to ‘extraordinary’ delays 

In her State of the Judiciary address last month, Alaska Chief Justice Susan Carney acknowledged the extremely delayed cases highlighted in recent media coverage. 

“The delays in those cases are extraordinary,” she said.

She said C and B level felonies — the kind Drummer has been charged with — typically resolve within 10 months. Since his initial arraignment, Drummer has waited about 14 months. 

Carney said Alaska’s court system is  working to limit pretrial delays. 

“Presiding judges in each judicial district have issued orders limiting the number of continuances in a case and limiting the number the entire time that a case can be delayed absent truly extraordinary circumstances,” she said. 

Overburdened defense attorneys … or intentional delays?

Meanwhile, Drummer’s Anchorage-based lawyer, Rex Butler, has over 300 active cases across the state. He says his caseload is so high because he takes on cases that the state’s Public Defender Agency can’t represent due to conflicts of interest, like Drummer’s. 

Butler sometimes gets cases that have been in the court system for a few years already. 

“We pick up the case file, and now the file is on fire,” he said. 

Even though the case is new to Butler, the court is eager to see it resolved.

He said that sexual assault and domestic violence cases have become a lot more complex in his 40 years as a defense attorney. 

Felony cases take a lot longer to prepare for, with the risk of conviction carrying greater consequences, and they don’t move through the trial system nearly as quickly.

That causes them to pile up on attorneys’ desks. 

“The practice of criminal law has gotten much more complicated, involved and it’s tedious,” Butler said. “It’s always been very emotional.”

Butler says fewer and fewer lawyers want to take on cases that involve alleged heinous crimes, like murder and sexual assault. 

According to Juneau’s District Attorney Whitney Bostick, delays make it harder for prosecutors to prove to a jury “beyond a reasonable doubt” that a defendant committed a crime.

“In general, the state’s ability to prove a case becomes more difficult the longer the case is delayed,” she said.

She said witnesses get frustrated with delays, or their memories fade. Sometimes, witnesses die before a case reaches trial.

Some cases now take more time to both defend and prosecute, Bostick said, as technological advancements mean many cases have more evidence than they did even 10 years ago.

The ADN/ProPublica investigation found that, in some instances, pretrial delays are a tactic on the part of a defense team to stall a case so witnesses’ memories fade.

And, Bostick said, these delays take a toll on the victims. 

“They’ve gone through the unthinkable, and every time there’s a hearing, whether it be a bail hearing or a continuation of the case,” she said. “It brings that trauma that they experienced back front and center.”

Sometimes, victims don’t want to continue with the case after years of delay, she said. They lose hope. 

Phillip Drummer – the defendant who was begging to go to trial –  has multiple previous assault and DV charges starting in the late 1990s. In this case, though, he hasn’t been found guilty. 

And he’s still in jail in the meantime, even though he’s not serving a sentence.

For now, Drummer’s case continues in court limbo. His eleventh pre-trial conference is scheduled for March 28.

Correction: an earlier version of this story incorrectly reported the amount of time a trial must start under Rule 45 in Alaska. 

The Juneau Police officer who shot and killed a resident wielding a hatchet last year will not face criminal charges. 

The state’s Office of Special Prosecutions released a statement Wednesday that cleared Officer Jonah Hennings-Booth in the Christmas morning shooting of 30-year-old Raye Johnston.

Two other officers were present during the incident but did not fire their weapons.

The fatal shooting took place in the parking lot of the Mendenhall Valley Breeze In convenience store. According to the Juneau Police Department, the officers were responding to an emergency call because Johnston was allegedly yelling and threatening people with a hatchet.

The statement from the Office of Special Prosecutions says Johnston did not comply with officers when ordered to put down the weapon and continued to advance toward the officers even after officers used their tasers. Hennings-Booth then shot Johnston, who was pronounced dead at the scene.

In its review of the incident, the state found Hennings-Booth was “legally justified in his use of deadly force” against Johnston.

Johnston’s death was the second shooting fatality involving police in Juneau last year. In July, police shot and killed 35-year-old Steven Kissack downtown. Months later, the Office of Special Prosecutions ruled the shooting was justified and cleared all officers involved of any criminal charges. 

Since 2009, there have been more than 150 police shootings in Alaska. No officers involved have been charged with a crime. 

In the days after the shooting, Deputy Police Chief Krag Campbell said the department planned to release police body camera footage to the public, but did not say at the time when that would happen. Campbell said in a text message Wednesday that they plan to release body camera footage on Thursday evening.

This story has been updated. 

Alaska Supreme Court Chief Justice Susan Carney defended the court system’s work and laid out plans for the future in a speech to state lawmakers on Wednesday.

Carney spent a significant part of her first State of the Judiciary address responding to concerns raised in recent news stories from the Anchorage Daily News and ProPublica highlighting yearslong delays in court proceedings.

In one case, it took seven years for a sexual assault witnessed by a police officer to go to trial. Another sexual assault case has gone more than a decade without a trial. The reports highlighted the growing time it takes to resolve unclassified felonies, like rape and murder.

Carney said the court system is working to be more efficient. She said courts are now closing more cases than they open every year, and the number of open cases is down by a third over the past year.

“But we know that we have more work to do,” she said. “Reducing the number of open criminal cases and the time it takes to get them done is our No. 1 priority at all levels of the court.”

Yearslong delays are “not typical,” she said. The average misdemeanor is resolved in six months or less, and felonies short of the most serious charges typically are closed in roughly a year, according to figures she outlined to lawmakers. Unclassified felonies, including rape and murder, take an average of three years — triple what they took a decade ago.

Carney highlighted a few efforts aimed at making courts more efficient — things like rules limiting delays, calling retired judges in to hear cases, and training aimed at speeding the process. But Carney told lawmakers that there’s only so much the court system can do.

“Three years is a long time for victims and for other people involved in those cases,” she said. “But those are the most serious cases. The facts tend to be more complicated. The number of people tend to be larger. The evidence issues that can arise can be very complex, and there’s always constitutional concerns. It’s very hard to shorten the time that those cases get.”

Carney also discussed efforts to expand restorative justice, mediation and collaboration with tribes. And she said the court system plans to release a “cutting edge chatbot” powered by artificial intelligence to deal with the complexities of the legal system when a loved one dies.

Carney also asked lawmakers to support the court system’s budget requests, including the next phase of a project that would add new courtrooms in Palmer to support the fastest-growing area of the state.

Carney presides over the state’s first majority-female Supreme Court and delivered the speech to a Legislature that also includes the state’s first majority-female House of Representatives.

“This has been a long time coming,” she said. “But what an example for Alaska’s children — that they can aspire to these kind of positions and know that they can achieve them.”

A teenager was fatally shot at a roundabout in Juneau’s Mendenhall Valley early Monday morning. 

According to an updated news release from the Juneau Police Department, the shooting happened shortly after midnight. Later on Monday morning, police identified the victim as a 16-year-old boy and the shooter as a 24-year-old man. Their names have not been released to the public.  

“Both drivers appear to have been unknown to each other before this incident,” said Deputy Chief Krag Campbell. 

According to police, the 24-year-old told officers that he was followed by another vehicle while he was driving from the area near Safeway to the roundabout connecting Stephen Richards Memorial Drive and Mendenhall Loop Road. 

The man told police he drove around the roundabout multiple times before stopping. He said the teenager then pulled up alongside his vehicle. 

The man reported that the teenager was upset and yelling, and allegedly appeared to have a rifle in his hand. He told police the teenager then pointed the weapon at him. Then the man said he pulled out a pistol and fatally shot the teenager, who was pronounced dead at the scene. 

According to police, the teenager’s weapon was later identified as a pellet or BB-style rifle. 

Police say the shooter called 911 to report what happened and waited at the scene for police to arrive. After a preliminary investigation, police released him from custody. 

Police originally identified both the shooter and the victim as men.

Campbell said JPD will continue to investigate the incident. The information they gather will be forwarded to Juneau’s District Attorney’s office, who will determine if charges are warranted.

This story has been updated. 

Whitney Bostick became Juneau’s new district attorney in November.

Bostick grew up in Palmer and previously worked in the Anchorage district attorney’s office and as a private attorney, often representing domestic violence victims. The Juneau district attorney serves northern Southeast communities between Wrangell and Yakutat.

According to a recent report from the Anchorage Daily News, pretrial delays across the state are creating a backlog for the court system. Bostick sat down with KTOO to discuss her background and plans to address these delays.

Listen:

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity. 

Whitney Bostick: When I graduated in 2010, I came back and worked for a private law firm in Anchorage, doing family law and criminal defense for about eight years as a practicing attorney. 

I law clerked and interned in that office for a little bit before I passed the bar. Doing primary family law and criminal defense for that private law firm, I interacted a lot with victims of domestic violence. And I had grown up always wanting to be a prosecutor in some fashion, and I got to a point when I was in private practice that I wanted to get back to feeling more fulfilled in what I was achieving and what I was doing and how I was helping my community.

And that work with the domestic violence victims that I had when I was in private practice just kind of kept pulling me to wanting to do more to help them. So that’s when I started looking into switching to do prosecution and working for the State. 

Yvonne Krumrey: So what brought you to this role in Juneau from Anchorage?

Whitney Bostick: Sometimes it happens that different offices need help, staffing-wise, for various reasons. And in December of 2023, I had volunteered to come down to help for two weeks, for a two week period. And at the time, the district attorney position was open, and I came down, and the team here, working with them was great.

I clicked really well with a group of people that were here. The community is wonderful and gorgeous. You can’t beat the views that you have from downtown by any, any stretch of the imagination. And I got here and immediately — clicking with everybody, everybody, you know, we’re all of the same mind of the goal that we’re working towards. And we all worked really well together. 

And it took some time for me, personally to like, one, see the ability myself to have this role, once I had the time to think about it, then I was like, “I can’t not apply.” And I felt like the group of people that I’d be working with here, I felt like I was doing them a disservice by not applying. And being down here and helping them and supporting them, because that’s always how I’ve envisioned myself, as a leader, as supporting the people that I’m working with to be able to do their job better. 

Yvonne Krumrey: How does your background in domestic violence inform the work you do for the district attorney’s office? 

Whitney Bostick: Some of the hardest things we’re doing are the cases that we can’t proceed on because we can’t prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. And that’s not to say we don’t believe it didn’t happen, but we have to evaluate, “Can we actually prove this to either a jury of six or a jury of 12 beyond a reasonable doubt?” And those are sometimes some of the most difficult conversations we have.

Because somebody who’s had the worst experience you can possibly imagine to them, that’s not what they’re having to consider. And it’s hard to explain what our criminal justice system is like and the realities of that, while also telling them that “I hear what you went through and that is valid,” and validate their feelings in a way that they don’t feel like they can never come and seek assistance again .

Because we don’t want that. Ultimately, we want them to feel like they can always come back and say, you know, go report to law enforcement or come to us and talk about what they’ve experienced.

Yvonne Krumrey: What would you like the public to know about your work? 

Whitney Bostick: I switched to doing public service and working for the government because I wanted to serve the communities that I live in, and it’s been an honor to be selected for this position. 

Juneau has been great the two months that I’ve been here and in last December. I couldn’t have asked for anything better. Everyone’s very friendly, and I just want them to know that I’m endeavoring every day, to represent the City of Juneau and the state of Alaska to the best of my ability, and make sure our victims are heard.

Yvonne Krumrey: As the Juneau District Attorney, how do you plan to kind of tackle or push back on pretrial delays?

Whitney Bostick: What we’re working on doing is, you know, we’re prioritizing the cases that defendants are in custody and that they’re older or they’re high level cases and and making sure that we’re prioritizing those cases for trial and reviewing the cases to make sure they’re cases that we should be trying as well.

We don’t want witnesses or victims to not be available for trial, so we’re having to prioritize and push for these cases to be tried. We’re, you know, we’re not shying away from doing trials, and we’re making sure that the cases that we’re pushing to trial are cases that are ready to go. 

Yvonne Krumrey: Thank you for taking the time to talk to me. 

Whitney Bostick: Thank you. 

A man held at the Anchorage Correctional Complex has died after authorities say his cellmate severely beat him, in a case involving mental health concerns.

William Farmer, 36, died Monday at an Anchorage hospital, according to an Alaska State Troopers statement. He is the first Alaska inmate to die this year.

The Alaska Department of Law said 33-year-old Lawrence Fenumiai is now charged with second-degree murder in Farmer’s death.

According to a charging document against Fenumiai, jail staff first noticed the incident just after 6 p.m. on Dec. 17. A correctional officer said he looked through a cell door and saw Fenumiai atop Farmer, punching him in the head. The officer banged on the window and ordered Fenumiai to stop as he awaited backup.

Fenumiai allegedly didn’t stop punching Farmer until more officers arrived. Three minutes after the first officer arrived, Fenumiai was restrained and removed from the cell. Medics were called for Farmer, who was unconscious and taken to Providence Alaska Medical Center.

Another inmate also in the cell told troopers that Farmer had arrived within the last day. He said on Dec. 17 Farmer had been lying on the floor and talking to himself. Fenumiai, he said, climbed down from his top bunk in the cell, told Farmer to “shut the (expletive) up,” then began striking him, according to the charging document.

Megan Edge, director of the Alaska Prison Project at the American Civil Liberties Union of Alaska, said it’s rare for an Alaska inmate to fatally assault another.

“One in a year would be unusual,” Edge said. “Two in a year is exceptionally unusual and very concerning.”

Farmer’s death comes nearly a year after troopers said they were investigating the death of Anchorage Correctional Complex inmate Joshua Zimmerman as a homicide. Troopers spokesman Austin McDaniel had no updates Tuesday on that investigation, but said it’s “still active and ongoing.”

In a Wednesday response to emailed questions, state Department of Corrections officials said staff evaluate all major incidents at Alaska correctional facilities alongside investigations by troopers.

“The safety and security of all individuals housed in any of our facilities is our top priority,” DOC officials said. “We are constantly evaluating best practices, which is evident in the fact that occurrences of this nature are rare.”

Court records show that Farmer and Fenumiai had taken different paths to last month’s deadly encounter.

Anchorage police said Farmer had been arrested Dec. 5 in a string of robberies at Midtown businesses, including two in November during which he allegedly pepper-sprayed employees.

Fenumiai had last been charged in May with a misdemeanor assault in Juneau, during which he allegedly punched a man in the head and destroyed a smartphone.

Edge, with the ACLU, said the two men shouldn’t have been in a cell together on Dec. 17 in the first place.

DOC officials said Fenumiai was initially held at the Lemon Creek Correctional Center in Juneau, then transferred to the Anchorage jail on June 23 to be mentally evaluated at the Alaska Psychiatric Institute. He spent some of his Southcentral Alaska time at the Goose Creek Correctional Center in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough.

Records show Fenumiai was ordered to be transported from Goose Creek to API on Nov. 13. The Juneau assault case was dismissed on Dec. 13, after Fenumiai was found incompetent to stand trial.

A second transport order was issued that day – four days before the reported assault – for Fenumiai to be sent to Juneau. But he never got moved.

“What happened in the system that left him stuck in Anchorage and not transported back to Juneau when the charges were dropped?” Edge said.

Corrections officials didn’t directly answer a question about why Fenumiai wasn’t transported to Juneau before the assault. They noted that his transport order was vacated on Dec. 20, after the reported assault happened.

“Mr. Fenumiai has been in specialized housing, without incident, during the entire period of his incarceration,” DOC officials said.

Edge – a former DOC spokeswoman under previous Gov. Bill Walker – said the jail houses a large and diverse population, with many people held for uncertain durations of time. The Anchorage Daily News and ProPublica reported Tuesday that times to resolve major cases in Alaska have ballooned, with a majority of inmates statewide now in pretrial custody without being convicted of a crime.

Edge said the situation is complicated by widespread delays in freeing inmates after judges order their release. That leads to severe overcrowding at the Anchorage Correctional Complex, she said, including the triple-bunking described in Fenumiai’s charging document.

“You usually have multiple people to a cell, and sometimes you have people that are vulnerable, who should not be in general population,” she said. “And that becomes especially dangerous for everybody there, and traumatic for everybody there.”

According to the charges against Fenumiai, he told an investigator that Farmer had irritated him by refusing multiple demands to be silent.

“Lawrence stated that it looked like Farmer did not want to stop talking so he just started hitting him,” the charges said.

According to the charges, when an investigator asked Fenumiai if he wanted to kill Farmer, he said yes and added that Farmer had not struck him. When asked if he was injured, Fenumiai allegedly said that his hands were sore.

Edge noted that the department had not posted an online death notification for Farmer on its website, despite the statement from troopers. A DOC spokesperson said Farmer was not being considered an in-custody death because prosecutors released him to pretrial supervision on Dec. 23, nearly a week after the assault took place. Edge said that doesn’t make sense.

“DOC should be reporting his death because he died (as) a result of an assault that occurred inside of one of their institutions, that they failed to protect him in,” she said.

The ACLU is independently investigating Farmer’s death, Edge said, as it does all deaths of Alaska inmates. She extended her condolences to his loved ones.

“Our hearts go out to his family, who are left to deal with what’s happened because of the failure in a lot of systems,” she said. “It’s just – it’s absolutely heartbreaking.”

Court records show Fenumiai remained in custody Wednesday at the Anchorage Correctional Complex.