The following was published as an opinion editorial by Doron Levine, the ACLU of Alaska's Prison Project Intake Attorney in the Anchorage Daily News on January 18, 2025. The original piece can be found here.
I joined the Alaska Public Defender Agency in 2021. On my first day, I was given 273 cases. For a few months in 2022, I had about 400 cases at once. With that many cases and more always flowing in, giving every case and client the attention they deserve is impossible. This is not the Public Defender Agency’s fault but rather a symptom of an underlying problem: Alaska’s criminal legal system is drowning. Here is some of what I witnessed, and what many Alaskans experience daily.
For any report of a suspected crime, a prosecutor must decide whether to pursue charges. Even after a case is filed, the prosecutor can drop charges at any time, a power even judges don’t have. But Alaska prosecutors often carry hundreds of cases at once, far more than they can bring to trial. Prosecutors must carefully review the evidence in each case. This process takes time. Video, audio and police reports can pile up in simple cases, let alone complex investigations with dozens of witness interviews, warrant searches, forensic reports and medical records. Getting a handle on 50 cases simultaneously is difficult, let alone 500. So, cases are continued.
Judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys meet regularly for pretrial conference hearings. Because there are so many cases, the court bundles these hearings into massive hearing “blocks” that can take most of a day. In bigger courthouses, over 100 cases can be scheduled in a block. Defendants wait their turn, often for hours. When a case is finally called, the hearing itself often takes under 30 seconds. Defense attorneys request continuances at most of these hearings because they are consumed with other cases in their massive caseload requiring more immediate attention. They also often ask for continuances because they’re missing evidence that the prosecutor is obligated to hand over, known as discovery. I saw cases where it took years for prosecutors to turn over complete discovery. Once discovery is ostensibly complete, the prosecutor or defense attorney can say they’re ready for a trial, but most courtrooms can handle at most a few per month. Defendants have a right to trial within 120 days, but that rule has built-in exceptions that judges use to extend the time and accommodate volume. Most cases are continued at pretrial conferences without pushback from the attorneys or the judge.
Meanwhile, public defenders struggle to defend their clients amid a constant flood of calls, jail visits, court hearings, evidence to review and new case assignments. Because of the workload, most trial-level attorneys leave within a few years. This guarantees a persistent shortage of public defenders qualified to handle complex felony cases. Each time an attorney leaves, a new one has to start on those cases from scratch. So, they are continued.
Alaska’s huge system of pretrial surveillance is a major cause, and symptom, of the delays. Many defendants — including many charged with misdemeanors — are released on bail to supervision through ankle monitoring, house arrest, urine testing or breathalyzer testing until their case ends. Failure to comply is a crime. Pretrial surveillance has become so widespread that, in my experience, the crime of “violation of condition of release” seems to be the most common crime charged in Alaska courts. It forces public defenders to spend much of their time fielding calls and hearings about bail conditions, pretrial surveillance and arrest warrants for missing court instead of, say, reviewing evidence or preparing for a trial. A handful of clients struggling under pretrial surveillance can consume a public defender’s entire week. So, cases get continued.
In the meantime, defendants suffer and deteriorate. Their constitutional right to the presumption of innocence, gone. People unable to make bail often accept plea bargains so they can get out of jail rather than wait years for a trial. People on pretrial surveillance, as the months and years pass, are increasingly likely to relapse or miss a daily breath test, a mandatory appointment, or a pretrial conference, any of which can be grounds for rearrest. For people working three jobs to support a child, battling PTSD, experiencing homelessness, struggling with an addiction, or who make a human mistake and simply forget, this turns into a crushing cycle of bail and jail.
As a public defender, people often asked me, “Is it scary to meet with your clients?” The question betrays a profound misunderstanding of most crimes and criminal defendants that must come from reading about high-profile cases in the news or listening to sensational “true crime” podcasts. Those cases get attention because they’re uncommon. The volume overwhelming Alaska’s court system is mostly cases that would never make headlines and are deeply intertwined with poverty, drug or alcohol addiction or mental illness.
The criminal legal system in Alaska is overwhelmed and change is necessary. To improve, we must understand the full picture. Public safety begins with investing in communities. In the meantime, let’s stop blaming defendants for systemic delays that hurt them too.
Doron Levine is the Prison Project intake attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Alaska. He served as a public defender in the Mat-Su from 2021-2024.
