There have been several newspaper articles in the last weeks on the stagnation of the Alaska judicial system.
While the state constitution guarantees defendants the right to a speedy trial, many cases are being repeatedly postponed. These articles have addressed the issue from the perspective of judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys. The common theme seems to be that the entire system is to blame from too many cases, too few judges and attorneys, too large a work load, too little funding and, of course, the ever-blamed pandemic holdover.
There have been several studies by the court system on how to address the problem but, unfortunately, those have had little impact. Superior Court Judge Thomas Matthews, in his recent opinion piece in the Anchorage Daily News, made the suggestion that lawyers should “work toward resolution without the need for trials.” In other words, do what it takes to plea bargain. This stagnation not only affects defendants, it is especially hard on victims and their families as they seek resolution.
It is no secret that Alaska is the national leader on many fronts. Unfortunately, those fronts include venereal disease, sexual assault, domestic violence and violence against women. Our town has been traumatized by the violent murder of two women and we have yet to have a communal resolution as those two heinous felonies linger in the system.
We have to ask ourselves if we as a community are complicit in not demanding these defendants come to trial. As the memory of the murders slip in and out of our collective consciousness, we tolerate legislators that accept sexual assault as the norm, we tell perpetrators that they may not be brought to justice and we tell families that they will have to await a final resolution to their grief.
In one of the local cases, the district attorney is pleading the charge down from “murder-extreme indifference” to “manslaughter-death not murder” and offering five years off the sentence.
I do not believe that we as a community should accept this as the way to “work toward resolution.” We must deal with the epidemic of domestic violence in our community. We must work toward a resolution of the many factors that influence the legal stagnation but especially we cannot remain complicit in our silence or tolerance of those that won’t speak out publicly on violence against women.
Bill Bell is a longtime physician and member of the Homer community.