A top Alaska lawmaker says the state needs to hire twice as many prosecutors and public defenders if it wants to end the type of extreme court delays that the Anchorage Daily News and ProPublica have exposed over the past year.
Rep. Andrew Gray, chairman of a legislative committee that has jurisdiction over Alaska’s justice system, prosecutors and public defenders, said news organizations’ reporting on criminal cases delayed for years “stabs me in the heart.” The time it takes to resolve Alaska’s most serious criminal cases is three years, more than twice as long as in 2015.
“I hate how slow this system is. It’s killing me,” Gray said.
The fault, he said, should not lie with front-line attorneys but with the state of Alaska for not recruiting enough prosecutors and public defenders.
Gray is the latest official to respond to reports from the Daily News and ProPublica revealing how delays can harm defendants and victims of crimes.
Susan M. Carney, Chief Justice of the Alaska Supreme Court, said in February that the system “did not meet expectations – ours or those of Alaskans” for the rapid delivery of justice. Next month, the court ordered new restrictions on extensions before trial.
But Gray said that beyond the court order, it will take new resources to achieve the goal of quickly resolving more cases. The justice system’s own standard for speedy trials sets a deadline of 120 days, which is rarely met.
(Gray, in an interview, and Carney, in her speech to the Legislature, both noted that the median time to resolve less serious charges is much faster than for the most serious crimes: Class B misdemeanors — crimes such as criminal mischief or shoplifting — are resolved in a median time of about four months, Carney said.)
Victim advocates, lawyers and judges told news outlets that Alaska has been grappling with mounting delays for decades.
Gray said lawmakers, who are drafting the state spending plan and began a new legislative session Tuesday, should include additional funds to reduce the caseload carried by prosecutors and public defenders.
“I don’t know exactly what the number is, but it will be a significant number,” Gray said. “And yes, I would absolutely advocate for that.”
Retired Fairbanks Superior Court Judge Niesje Steinkruger, who worked as a public defender and assistant attorney general, acknowledged that understaffing is straining attorneys on both sides, who are pressured to resolve cases more quickly.
“It puts these lawyers in a terrible position. They are type A personalities: they want to do their best.”
Jacqueline Shepherd, an ACLU of Alaska attorney who tracks pretrial delays, agreed on the need for more front-line attorneys. According to a 1998 Legislature audit, public defenders can “ethically” handle no more than 59 cases at a time. Shepherd said some public defenders in Anchorage are asked to juggle between 140 and 170. “Obviously they are overloaded,” she said.
But she added that increasing staffing alone would not solve the problem. Judges, she said, need to start pushing back against Alaska’s culture of delaying trial hearings and ensuring cases move toward trial or dismissal.
Gray, a Democrat from traditionally red Alaska, became chairman of the Judiciary Committee because the Alaska Senate and House of Representatives are currently led by bipartisan majorities.
His proposal for more money will likely prove difficult in a state that has no income or sales tax and faces a revenue shortfall made worse by low oil prices.
Governor Mike Dunleavy, Republican, in December proposed a plan it would bolster services by spending from reserves while setting the annual oil wealth dividend each resident receives at $3,650, a sharp increase from previous years. Paying the dividend would cost double what Dunleavy asked for for public safety, courts and prisons combined.
A spokesperson for the governor did not directly respond to a question about whether Dunleavy would support doubling the state’s prosecutors and defense attorneys. However, the spokesperson noted that funding for prosecutors and defense attorneys had already increased under Dunleavy in an effort to reduce caseloads and backlogs.
State budget documents show spending on the Law Department, which employs prosecutors, was $123 million last year, 42% more than it was in 2018, when Dunleavy was elected. Spending on two agencies that oversee state-appointed defense attorneys totals $87 million, a 69 percent increase. Department of Public Safety spending also increased by the same percentage.
“Improving public safety has been Governor Dunleavy’s top priority throughout his tenure,” said spokesman Grant Robinson.
The increase in budgets for defense attorneys and prosecutors was due in part to a bill passed in 2022, as part of an effort to increase salaries and improve retention and recruitment.
Gray said the effort was a good first step that helped fill vacancies. But he said the next step would be to increase the workforce.
“They need to recognize that even though they are fully staffed, they are overworking their employees and that is why we are seeing these cases that drag on,” he said.
But House Finance Co-Chair Andy Josephson, D-Anchorage, said any effort to double the number of such lawyers would be unlikely to succeed this year. The state is strapped for cash, he said.
“It’s the same reason the Anchorage School District a budget deficit of $78 million” said Josephson, a former prosecutor who oversees the Justice Department’s budget and sponsored the bill increasing prosecutors’ salaries. “For decades we’ve been trying to give people dividends and not tax them, and the system is exhausted by both of those things.”
During the same period, victims’ rights advocates have noted increasingly long delays for the most serious criminal cases.
Some dragged on so long that the victims died before getting justice, like two women sexually assaulted in broad daylight in one of Anchorage’s most popular parks. The attacks occurred in 2017, but it took seven years and 50 delays for the case to go to trial in December 2024. The jury found the defendant, Fred Tom Hurley III, guilty of two counts of second-degree sexual assault, but not guilty of one count of sexual assault.
Another case took even longer: 10 years. In all that time, while judges allowed 74 delays, no one in the courtroom ever asked the victim what she wanted. A key witness died en route. In April, a jury found that the accused, Lafi Faualo, guilty of first degree sexual assault and first-degree assault involving a weapon, but not guilty of one count of sexual assault.
Faualo’s defense attorney was juggling some 375 active cases before the trial.
In another example of extreme delays, Kipnuk resident Justine Paul spent seven years in prison for murder after being charged based on key blood evidence that was proven wrong within a year. Meanwhile, the murder of his girlfriend Eunice Whitman remains unsolved, with the investigation only recently reopened.
State officials say the situation has improved since the state Supreme Court’s order limiting pretrial delays took effect in May.
Rebecca Koford, a spokeswoman for the Alaska court system, said that as of Jan. 1, 2026, there were 743 pending criminal cases more than two years old, or 16% of all crimes. This is an improvement from January 1, 2024, when there were 1,428 cases, or 22% of the total.
The court’s order regarding the delays, combined with previous efforts in 2023, “have led to significant progress,” Koford said. “The judges have limited continuances, bunked trials, and used all available resources to move cases forward quickly and fairly. »
Yet the latest annual report from the Alaska Criminal Justice Data Analysis Commission noted that cases continue to take longer than in 2019 and before.
Gray acknowledged it will be very difficult to get lawmakers to agree on more money for lawyers.
“But we have to have this debate,” he said, “because that’s how we’re going to solve this problem.”