Eagle River nurse practitioner to be resentenced in three overdose deaths

Jessica Joyce Spayd, a former Eagle River nurse practitioner once sentenced to 30 years in federal prison in an opioid case, is waiting to be sentenced again after pleading guilty in three overdose deaths.

A sentencing memorandum and a sealed addendum in her case were filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Anchorage. Sentencing was set for Nov. 12, but that date may have changed. The court ruled on a request for a delay Oct. 27 and issued another order Thursday, and neither order's text is public.

Spayd pleaded guilty April 7 to three counts of distributing a controlled substance resulting in death, ahead of a retrial that had been set for June 2. The counts involve people who died Oct. 15, 2014, Dec. 22, 2015, and March 2, 2019. Seven other counts are set to be dismissed at sentencing. Judge Scott Hugh Rash of Arizona, who is assigned to the case, accepted the plea Aug. 4.

Federal agents arrested Spayd in October 2019. An affidavit filed with the criminal complaint alleged she had treated just over 450 patients, "many of whom traveled hundreds of miles from Fairbanks, Utqiagvik, King Salmon and other remote locations."

Prosecutors later said she prescribed and dispensed about 4.5 million dosages of opioids, including fentanyl, methadone, oxycodone and hydromorphone, over just over five years. Her prescriptions were "routinely five to 15 times higher" than the maximum safe daily dosage recommended by guidelines, they said.

A jury convicted her in October 2022 on all 10 counts, including five counts of distributing a controlled substance resulting in death. Then-U.S. District Judge Joshua M. Kindred sentenced her to 30 years in June 2023.

That conviction didn't stand. In August 2025, Senior Judge Marco A. Hernandez threw it out and ordered a new trial, finding that Kindred should have stepped aside. One of Kindred's law clerks had worked on Spayd's case while applying for and accepting a job with the U.S. Attorney's Office, which was prosecuting her, and kept texting Kindred, including about the trial, after she joined that office, according to the order. Kindred resigned in July 2024 after a federal judicial misconduct investigation.

Prosecutors said in 2022 that the most serious charges carry a mandatory minimum of 20 years to life in prison. The public court records reviewed don't show what sentence Spayd faces now, or what prosecutors and her federal public defenders will ask for.