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The mayor Ancoridge Susanna Lafrance said that this week the city hired a full list of prosecutors and no longer abandoned a criminal case of a short staffing schedule. The announcement happens nine months after Anchorage Daily News and Propublica report Mass dismissal.
“Public safety begins with accountable – and we cannot prosecute people if we do not have prosecutors in court,” Lafrans said in the news release, announcing that the largest city of Alaska for the first time since 2020 filled all “front -line” jobs.
The investigation of the editorial boards, published in October, showed that the city prosecutors had abandoned hundreds of misconduct, since there were enough lawyers in wages. Between May 1 and October 2 last year, the city fell more than 250 cases of attack on family violence and more than 270 drunken driving cases due to the inability to reach the 120-day timing of Alaska to maintain the defendant’s right at a quick trial.
A few days after the investigation, Alaska announced that he would help pursue cases in the city to avoid rapid court dismissal.
But these state prosecutors are no longer needed. According to the city, the city prosecutor’s office now has a full employee of the Front -Linia, who are taking the case, as well as the head and lawyer who files petitions and appeals. The only job, they say, is a supervisory role: the deputy municipal prosecutor.
This is about 7% of the vacancies in the prosecutor’s office. In contrast, more than 40% of city prosecutors were vacant as of mid-2014, the city spokesman reports.
On Wednesday, a court call in the courthouse Bonni Ancoridge, an assistant to the city prosecutor Andy Harbe, announced that the city was ready to go to court in case after the case, including drunken driving, accusations in weapons and attacks on family violence. This was a completely different scene since September, when the prosecutor’s office regularly forced to abandon the accusations in cases that were approaching a quick trial.
“We are not in a position when we were last fall,” Humpy said, citing forced dismissal. “This is no longer going on.”
City prosecutors said they still dismiss the case for reasons except for a quick trial. For example, on Wednesday, the hump moved to the dismissal of two cases, including an attack on family violence, citing factors such as the weakness of the case and inaccessible witnesses. The defender warned that the cases were approaching a 120-day fast period, but the hump said that the terms were not the cause of the dismissal.
In an an angridge, city prosecutors consider the cases of provinces, while state attorneys usually prosecute crimes.
Thanks to the most serious crime, the state has long resolved problems except the mass layoffs of the Ancoridge. In January, the messages were reported in January Some of these cases are delayed By the decade before the trial. In March, Alaska’s Supreme Court issued Series of orders aimed at reducing the delay.
The District Court Judge Brian Clark brought the Supreme Court ruling on Wednesday, when asked by lawyers if they would be ready to go to court, noting that the expected term.
