Crime & Courts

A grand jury indicted a Juneau man Thursday on two counts of felony assault for allegedly attacking two Juneau Police officers during an arrest earlier this month. 

James Carteeti, 45, of Juneau, is currently out of custody on bail. 

According to charging documents, officers originally responded to Carteeti’s Mendenhall Valley apartment in early October after neighbors complained of loud music and movement coming from his place. Carteeti already had a warrant for his arrest for a different crime.  

Charging documents say Carteeti turned off the music when officers arrived and began to yell. He allegedly became hostile and slammed his door closed. 

It was then that the officers opened his door and told him he had a warrant for his arrest. Police say Carteeti began punching and kicking the officers as they tried to arrest him. The incident left one officer with bent glasses and a red mark on his face. Another officer was taken to Bartlett Regional Hospital for an evaluation of his injuries. 

The FBI searched the cellphone records of Republican Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan and seven other U.S. senators and a member of the U.S. House as part of its investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, a newly released document shows.

The call logs cover several days during and around the insurrection, when rioters stormed the Capitol in an attempt to support then-incumbent President Donald Trump, who falsely claimed to have won reelection in 2020.

The logs do not show that the FBI obtained phone call recordings, only that an investigating agent was interested in who the senators were talking to, when they talked, how long they talked, and where the callers were. The document, released this week by the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, does not say why those senators were identified in particular and it does not say whether any investigative leads resulted from the records.

Sullivan himself is not under investigation.

According to a news release from the committee, the FBI sought and obtained data about the senators’ phone use in the days before, on and after the Jan. 6 insurrection, from Jan. 4 through Jan. 7, 2021.

The U.S. Department of Justice indicted Trump in 2023 for allegedly conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, but the special prosecutor in charge of the investigation abandoned that case after Trump was re-elected in 2024. Department policy says that sitting presidents cannot face criminal prosecution, and after the 2021 insurrection, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a decision limiting a president’s liability for conduct while in office.

Asked whether Sullivan had any contact with people who participated in or organized the riot at the U.S. Capitol, Devyn Shea, a spokesperson for Sullivan, said, “absolutely not.”

In a written statement, Sullivan called the FBI investigation “an absolute outrage.”

“We’ve just learned the Biden FBI was engaged in what appears to be an unprecedented fishing expedition against at least nine sitting Republican members of Congress — none of whom were under any type of investigation — surveilling our personal cell phone calls with family members, staff and colleagues. This is a new low in the political weaponization of the Justice Department,” Sullivan’s statement said.

The other seven senators were Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), and Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.). Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.) was also on the FBI list.

Some senators, including Hawley and Tuberville, voted to object to the certification of the electoral results of the 2020 election.

Sullivan voted to support the certification of the election, and in a statement the day after the Jan. 6 violence at the Capitol, he called the event “sad” and “dispiriting.”

All have been supporters of Trump and his policies; in office, Sullivan has been a reliable vote for the president and his agenda.

A Washington state jury awarded $16.9 million to the family of a man who died in a 2019 airplane crash on Unalaska’s runway.

After a six-week trial and about three days of deliberation at a Kent, Washington courthouse, jurors found Peninsula Aviation Services, Inc. liable for the death of David Oltman of Washington.

Miller, Weisbrod, Olesky, Attorneys at Law — the Texas-based firm representing Oltman — said the case marks the nation’s first fatal commercial airline crash trial in more than a quarter of a century.

PenAir’s Saab 2000 airplane with about 40 passengers, including 38-year-old Oltman landed in Unalaska almost exactly six years ago, overrunning the short runway and sliding into ballast rocks overhanging the harbor.

Shrapnel from a propeller flew into the cabin, fatally wounding Oltman. Nine others were injured. Oltman was traveling from his home in Wenatchee, Washington to Unalaska and purchased his flights through Alaska Airlines.

After a two-year investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board, investigators found faulty wiring, lax oversight by regulators and inexperienced crew to blame. Specifically, officials said the probable cause of the accident was bad wiring of an antiskid brake system that likely sent the plane over the runway, and happened during a previous overhaul.

According to the report, PenAir’s flight crew knew a significant tailwind was present at the time, and a landing in the opposite direction of the flight crew’s approach that day would have favored the wind pattern.

Now, a jury says the company that provided the overhaul and cross-wired the brakes is partially responsible for the incident, but PenAir is mostly at fault and owes the family for their negligence, according to the firm’s press release.

It’s been a month since the sexual assault trial against a former Juneau chiropractor ended with two acquittals and 14 charges declared mistrials. Although Jeffery Fultz wasn’t found guilty, those charges are still active and he could stand trial again. 

But earlier this month, the judge in the case dismissed one of those remaining charges. And this dismissal reveals a gap in state laws that makes it harder for alleged victims of sexual assault to achieve justice.

Listen:

More than a dozen former patients have accused Jeffrey Fultz of sexual assault under the guise of medical care while he worked as a chiropractor at Southeast Alaska Regional Health Consortium in Juneau. 

Judge Larry Woolford recently ruled that one alleged victim’s testimony doesn’t match the legal definition of the sexual assault by a medical provider charge. The acquittal order says the charge is being dismissed because the woman accusing Fultz was aware that the contact she received was “sexual and that it was not part of legitimate medical treatment.” 

In other words, Judge Woolford dismissed the charge because the victim knew she was being assaulted. That’s because a key part of the legal definition of sexual assault by a medical provider requires that the alleged victim isn’t aware of sexual contact happening at the moment.

State Prosecutor Jessalyn Gillum says the statute was originally written in response to a crime where a medical provider was sexually assaulting women behind a sheet, so they could not see the act. 

“Somebody who is receiving treatment and believing the behavior of the health care professional is consistent with that treatment, and then later finding out that that might not be the case,” she said. “That is a sort of a different kind of scenario than what was perhaps initially intended.”

So while that statute does apply to many of the women testifying against Fultz, some, like the one whose charge was dismissed after the trial, might fall through the gaps in the laws.

Jennifer Long is a former prosecutor and founded AEquitas, a nonprofit that advises prosecutors in sexual violence cases. She said that stipulation in the law doesn’t make sense. 

“To put that element in, that a victim is unaware that something is inappropriate, doesn’t really align with the dynamics of this kind of crime,” she said. 

She said that just because patients may realize that they are being assaulted doesn’t mean they are able to speak up or to leave an appointment immediately, especially when they are desperate for medical care. 

“You know what’s happened to you is wrong, and you have felt that it’s wrong, you may have still blamed yourself, or again, try to give the benefit of the doubt,” Long said. 

And Long said the power dynamic between a doctor and patient can be used to get patients to accept abuse or dismiss it. 

“This is just one other area where someone in a position of power is using a weapon, and it’s their power,” she said. “It’s no different than a gun. It’s no different than another threat. It’s just another way to get someone to comply.”

Let’s take a step back.

When the state first arrested Fultz in 2021 and charged him with assault, prosecutors were limited in what they could charge him with. 

At the time the alleged crimes were committed, the statute for sexual assault in Alaska required prosecutors to prove that the crime was committed under force, or threat of force. Almost all the alleged victims in Fultz’s trial said force was not involved.

The general sexual assault law changed in 2023, and the threat or use of force is no longer needed to prove assault. The new definition requires that a person did not freely give consent. But because that definition wasn’t law at the time of the alleged incidents, Fultz can’t be charged under it. 

The law change came amid a broader reckoning with sexual violence laws in Alaska. In 2018, an Anchorage judge faced public backlash, and was voted out, for accepting a plea agreement in a sexual violence case that he said reflected the state laws at the time.

So prosecutors in the case against Fultz had to choose between two limiting definitions of assault: one where there was a threat of force or one that specifies the defendant is a medical provider, and that the victim was unaware they were being sexually assaulted. They chose the second option. 

Fultz’s former defense did not respond to a request for comment on this acquittal, and a spokesperson from the Dept. of Law said over email that judges do not comment as a rule, “in order to maintain the integrity of their decisions.”

Three charges of the original 16 have now been dismissed.

The state plans to retry the 13 remaining charges. A status hearing to decide what will happen next in the case is scheduled for Oct. 15.

A former Juneau chiropractor accused of sexual assault now has a public defender. 

More than a dozen former patients have accused Jeffrey Fultz of sexual assault under the guise of medical care while he worked at Southeast Alaska Regional Health Consortium. 

Last month, his trial ended in a mistrial on 14 counts of felony sexual assault, and two not guilty counts. The state is pushing forward to retry the remaining charges that are eligible to be considered again.

Fultz’s new lawyer will be a public defender. People accused of crimes are generally eligible for a public defender if they can’t afford a private lawyer.

At a hearing this week, state prosecutor Krystyn Tendy said that Fultz is living in an expensive home in Colorado that he purchased for $900,000, and his high housing payments don’t make him eligible for a public defender. 

“He is choosing to spend over $5,500 a month on housing,” Tendy said. “I think there is a very, very big difference between somebody being unable to pay in terms of they’ve leveraged themselves, and somebody who is truly indigent.”

But Judge Larry Woolford ruled that he did qualify, despite his financial situation.

“It is certainly true that on paper, in some ways, the defendant is a man of some substance,” Woolford said. “It is also unquestionably true that he has for many years now been dealing with the legal consequences of the allegations against him, and that he has spent a significant amount of money doing so.”

Fultz disclosed that he has just under $200,000 in assets between his house and vehicles, but Woolford argued that those assets are not easy to sell to pay legal fees. 

A status hearing, when all parties meet with the judge to determine next steps in a case, is scheduled for Oct. 15.

A high-profile lawsuit challenging a key part of Alaska’s homeschool system moved ahead this week after an Anchorage judge denied a motion to dismiss the case.

The lawsuit centers on what are known as correspondence school allotments, cash payments to families who homeschool their kids in the state’s public correspondence school system. They’re meant to pay for things like lessons and supplies, and some parents use them to pay for private school tuition.

A group of parents sued the state in 2023, saying the use of allotments on private school tuition violates the state Constitution. Article 7 bars state spending “for the direct benefit of any religious or other private educational institution.”

At first, a judge ruled the allotment system as a whole was unconstitutional. That was later reversed by the state Supreme Court, which sent it back to a lower court for a closer look at how school districts allow allotments to be spent.

Then, earlier this year, a group of correspondence school parents represented by the legal nonprofit Institute for Justice asked the lower court judge to dismiss the case. They argued allotments are a direct benefit to correspondence school families, not private schools, and that the use of allotments for private school tuition is protected by the U.S. Constitution.

“The reality is that the Alaska Legislature has provided parents with funds to ensure that they can choose the education that fits their families’ needs, regardless of each family’s income,” they wrote. “That is a fully constitutional objective and the Program is a fully constitutional way to pursue that goal.”

But in an eight-page order on Monday, Superior Court Judge Laura Hartz disagreed. She said the Supreme Court’s decision requires a review of how allotments are actually spent in practice. The plaintiffs, the state and the school districts added to the case following the Supreme Court ruling all argued against dismissing the case and said a final ruling would require more evidence.

“Litigation of this case requires a factual record establishing actual authorized allotment expenditures,” Hartz wrote.

The ruling moves the case into the discovery phase, where attorneys for the parties will exchange evidence as they build a case for a possible trial.