Prosecutors sought 30 years, defense 20 for former nurse practitioner in 3 overdose deaths

Federal prosecutors asked a judge to send Jessica Joyce Spayd, a former Eagle River pain management nurse practitioner, to prison for 30 years for the overdose deaths of three patients. Her lawyers asked for 20.

U.S. District Judge Scott Hugh Rash was scheduled to sentence her Thursday morning in Anchorage. As of Thursday evening, court records showed no sentence.

It's the second time Spayd has faced sentencing in the case. A jury convicted her in 2022 and she was sentenced to 30 years, but a judge ordered a new trial last year. In April, she pleaded guilty to three counts of distributing schedule II drugs resulting in death. Her plea deal calls for 20 to 30 years in prison, and both sides agreed to be bound by that range.

From January 2014 to October 2019, Spayd wrote about 35,575 opioid prescriptions for more than 4.4 million pills, prosecutors wrote in their sentencing memo, citing state prescription monitoring data. That's about 35 times as many opioid prescriptions a year as an average nurse practitioner writes, and about 4.6 times as many as an average pain medicine physician, they said.

At least 36 of her patients died between 2014 and 2019, according to the presentence report quoted in the memo, a number agents called "astronomically high" for a pain management practitioner.

Her conduct was "significantly more egregious" than in two recent Alaska overdose-death cases, wrote Special Attorney Steven Clymer. In those cases, Sean Mobley got 30 years and Jacob Cotton got 25 years, minus seven months for time he'd spent in state custody before trial.

Spayd's federal public defenders, Gretchen Staft and Ben Muse, argued she was an overextended solo practitioner, not a pill mill. They acknowledged that the three patients showed warning signs they were abusing their prescriptions and that she kept prescribing anyway.

"She truly cared for her patients. She did not intend to hurt them," they wrote. "But she let her sympathy for her patients, rather than her professional judgment, control her decision making."

The 4.4 million figure counts every pill the same regardless of strength, they argued, and spread across the roughly 450 patients she treated at a time, it works out to about five pills per patient per day. Two of the three counts predate the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's first national opioid prescribing guideline in March 2016, they noted.

Spayd has no prior criminal record, no disciplinary infractions in custody and has paid the restitution ordered earlier, her lawyers said. She is being held at Hiland Mountain Correctional Center in Eagle River.

The three patients died in October 2014, at 42; in December 2015, at 74; and in March 2019.

Spayd was arrested in October 2019. A jury convicted her on all 10 counts in October 2022, including five counts of distribution resulting in death, and Judge Joshua Kindred sentenced her to 30 years in June 2023. Kindred resigned in July 2024 after a judicial misconduct order against him was made public. In October 2025, Senior Judge Marco Hernandez ordered a new trial, finding Kindred should have recused himself. One reason: a Kindred clerk kept working on Spayd's case after accepting a job with the U.S. Attorney's Office in Alaska.