This article was prepared for the ProPublica Local Reporting Network in partnership with Anchorage Daily News. Subscribe to Dispatches to receive such stories as soon as they are published.
This was announced by representatives of Alaska plans to help the Anchorage City Attorney’s Office bring criminal cases to trial days after the Anchorage Daily News and ProPublica reported that the municipality has terminated hundreds of cases due to low staffing.
Typically, the city prosecutes misdemeanors that occur within city limits, while the state prosecutes felonies. Over the next six months, the governments plan to work together to stop the wave of layoffs. Deputy Attorney General John Skidmore said Tuesday that his department will provide seven to 10 state attorneys to assist city officials.
Those prosecutors will add to the 13 officers the city said it had last week.
“Public safety is one of the primary goals of any government,” Skidmore said in a written statement. “The law department is not staffed to take on all the criminal cases in Anchorage, but we are working to reach out to protect the community as best we can while the municipal attorney’s office gets back on its feet.”
“A lot of our prosecutors live in Anchorage, so for a lot of us, it’s our community, too,” he said.
The Anchorage Daily News and ProPublica reported that between May 1 and Oct. 2, the Anchorage City Attorney’s Office dropped more than 930 misdemeanor criminal cases because the 120-day deadline to bring defendants to trial had expired or was about to expire. Now this number has exceeded 1000 cases.
The cases included charges of domestic violence, child abuse and DUI.
City officials said the municipality has a shortage of attorneys due to staff turnover and layoffs. In an effort to clear the backlog this year, judges have forced prosecutors to regularly review which cases will be ready for trial within 120 days, and prosecutors’ offices have typically been understaffed to move forward in time.
Anchorage City Attorney Eva Gardner previously said the city applied for state aid back in April, during then-Mayor Dave Bronson’s administration, but was denied. Skidmore said city officials did not directly ask for help at the April meeting.
Gardner, who started working for the city in July under new Mayor Suzanne LaFrance, said that when she learned of the apparent misunderstanding, she called Skidmore, and city and staff lawyers met Oct. 8 to discuss possible solutions.
“The state has a willingness to help, and it remains only to figure out how to do it,” she said.
Including dismissals through Oct. 9, the city has dismissed at least 279 domestic violence cases and 313 drunken driving cases since May 1 because it failed to meet a speedy trial deadline, according to a review of court records by news organizations .
Skidmore said the state plans to borrow attorneys from the Office of Special Prosecutions and the Anchorage District Attorney’s Office, as well as some former prosecutors who work in the Law Department’s civil division.
The city has already been working to recruit new prosecutors by offering additional pay this year, and city officials said those efforts are starting to pay off.
Gardner said that after the Anchorage Daily News and ProPublica revealed the mass layoffs on Oct. 13, she also heard from retired prosecutors who expressed interest in helping new municipal prosecutors bring cases to trial. The city is also considering that option, she said.
