Alaska Legislature: Senate Judiciary, 4/10/26, 1:30pm

Let's call this meeting of the Senate Judiciary Committee to order. It is 1:31 p.m. on Friday,

April 10,

2026. Before we begin, I want to thank Juliana Singh,

the Senate Judiciary Secretary who makes sure we have a transcript of our meetings, and Doug Bridges from the Juvenile L.A.O. who makes sure we have sound. At this time, I want to remind committee members and those in the room to please silence your cell phones. Present day we have Senator Stevens,

Senator Tilton.

I vice-chair Senator Keel and myself, Senator Klammer, we have a quorum to conduct business.

Our first and only item on our agenda today is House Bill 239, criminally negligent homicide failure to assist, sponsored by Representative Copp.

This is the second hearing of the bill in the Senate Judiciary Committee.

We will be finishing up the presentation that we started at our meeting on Wednesday,

April 8th.

Present today, Representative Copp, we are giving him an excused absence from committee because he's on the House floor,

but Mr.

Zep if you please come forward, put yourself on the record, and if you would then continue your presentation from our last hearing.

Good afternoon Mr.

Chairman, Mr.

Vice Chair and Committee members. For the record, my name is Gary Zepp, staff to Representative Chuck Kopp.

Looks like we're starting on slide five and towards the end I believe as I we heard testimony from Chase's mom and Miss Stauffer apparently was unavailable and that kind of concludes slide five.

I'll move on to slide six, if that's okay.

That's fine, I recognize that Senator Tobin arrived at 1:33.

And why now? As mentioned previously, the variables poll sentence sen sentencing range is down and have a significant impact on the actual time served by the perpetrator. The result is a perceived mismatch between culpability and consequence and eroding public trust.

And HB 239, as a summary,

establishes a four to seven year presumptive range for first time felony offenders when the death is caused by criminal negligence and the driver fails to render assistance and flees the scene.

And this sets a meaningful floor for sentencing and fatal hit and run crashes.

If criminally negligent homicide and failure to render

Aid arise from the same incident,

HB 239 also requires some consecutive time, and this helps to ensure that the failure to assist is not absorbed into a single sentence.

HB 239 does not change the definition of criminal negligence.

It does not eliminate judicial discretion,

and it does not apply when a driver stops and renders aid.

If a driver remains at the scene and provides assistance,

current law remains unchanged.

And in conclusion,

If you're in a crash and hit a pedestrian,

a cyclist, a skateboarder, et cetera, stop,

call 911, and stay with the injured party until the police arrive.

This could save someone's life, and it's the right thing to do.

I'd like to thank Mr. Chairman,

Mr. Vice Chairman,

and committee members for the opportunity to present to you.

Questions for Mr. Zep.

I would note online available for questions we have

Kasey Schroeder with the Department of Law,

Nancy Mead with the court system,

Chief Sean Case from Anchorage Police Department and Captain Scott Bartlett, Alaska State Troopers.

Any questions?

Senator Tillman.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and through the chair.

Mr. Zemp, maybe you can uh answer this, just a clarity um the rendering aid portion s um does that include that you have to stay until law enforcement arrives or is it making a phone call and then some kind of um imp some kind of help arrives, could you just give me some more clarity on that.

Sure. Through the chair, uh Senator Tilton, I'd like to call Lifeline if I could, if I could call

Casey from the Department of Law. She probably could explain the technicalities of law a lot better than I can.

Thank you.

Ms. Schroeder.

I'm fairly certain there'll be more questions, so bring all your notes.

For the record,

Senior Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division at the Department of Law. Um

Through the chair to Senator Tilton. Uh rendering aid actually does have a specific definition, and I'm drawing this from the um the jury instruction. Uh rendering assistance means the assistance that assistance that a reasonably prudent person would provide under the circumstances. Reasonable assistance may include making arrangements for medical treatment if it is apparent that treatment is necessary. So I think that it it just depends on the circumstances. Uh

um what is reasonably prudent under the circumstances?

Senator Keel.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair. Ms.

Ms.

Shorter, can

you help us with what some of the options are here? I know that the approach in the bill is to elevate the criminally negligent homicide under certain circumstances to an A felony.

Um, could we address the the situation that gave rise to the bill with uh different sentencing provisions applicable to this particular crime and circumstance, rather than changing the severity ladder?

Through the chair to Vice Chair Keel, I I believe so. I think this is one of the situations where you can achieve the same legal result by by drafting it in v various ways. So it just depends on the approach that the committee wants to take.

Senator Kehoe?

No. Well, it's good for it at the moment.

Senator Tobin?

Yeah.

Thank you, mr Chairman. And mr Schroeder, you might not have this data uh at your fingertips, but I'm happy if you uh could follow up. I'm curious to know the folks who uh have been uh within this group of folks where they have

For lack of a better term, hit and run,

what the age range is.

Are we talking about young kids who panic or have panic response?

Are we talking about older individuals?

Is there any data that we have to know about what are the ages of folks that have unfortunately engaged in this behavior in the past?

Through the chair, Senator Tauben, I don't have any data on that. We would have to hand poll the cases that have come in to us,

but I would just note for the committee that we don't get very many of these cases that meet this specific fact pattern.

Between 2020 and today,

we received 13 distinct cases. So this is not a fact pattern that often presents itself on our desk.

Senator Stevens.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Just, you know, it hits the top of my mind because we had a couple cases of staff being arrested here in Juneau for drinking and driving.

What is the difference if someone is drinking and say they find out they have a two-inch alcohol in their system,

are they treated any differently if they stop? Does that have any impact at all on that case or do other laws come into play if someone is drinking?

through the chair to Senator Stephens, when a case comes in and a prosecutor is reviewing it, the c prosecutor is gonna look at the totality of the circumstances. And obviously if the person doesn't stop and flees the scene, you're d you're talking about additional criminal charges. But we do look at what happened before, what happened during, and what happened after. If someone

You know, it hits somebody, they stop, they call for help. All of that is gonna be factored in to any sort of screening decision that we make or any sort of um uh offer that we might propose to make. All of that is factored in. So that it i it's the totality of the circumstances analysis.

Yeah, of course. Thanks.

Uh so I have a probably a series of questions. What

What House Bill 239 does is it says it takes two things to occur before the enhanced sentence. First,

one has to be driving in a criminally negligent manner and cause injury, and the second is they have to fail to stop.

And is there, from your perspective, do we need to make those tied together?

Both essentially both pieces of conduct before you have the enhanced sentence in Title 11?

Mr. Chairman, I I think that uh uh as along the lines of what Senator Kill was asking, I think that it depends on what you want the focus to be and what you want the results to be. Um you're talking about tying this bill ties two separate charges together and and any circumstance we could potentially charge the criminally negligent homicide on its own or we could charge the leaving the scene on its own. So that those are standalone charges, they don't necessarily have to be tied together.

in this bill it ties them together in order to achieve that enhanced sentencing and that's the policy call

So if we look at the existing Title 28 provisions,

today's law,

if somebody hit somebody driving,

let's say a pedestrian,

they hit the pedestrian and

The circumstances there's no fault on the drivers' fault. They v they wouldn't be negligent in a civil case. They're not intoxicated, they're not speeding, they're doing nothing

they're doing nothing about the driving itself that would create liability for the the way they were driving.

A person just uh suddenly jumped out, but they don't stop and they drive on and

And that person lies by the side of the road and four hours later is discovered dead having bled out and probably would have been saved if the person had stopped.

Does the person today get, does that prosecution for not stopping get treated differently because death occurred versus an injury today?

Mr. Chairman, under the law, it's under the same provision of law and the sentencing range, whether there's physical injury or death, that the sentencing range is zero to ten years. I will say though that if there is a death, obviously that's an argument the prosecutor's going to make to the make to the court to push the sentence higher than perhaps if it would have been just a physical injury.

And I know one option might be, and I think it's somewhat similar, although not exactly the same in the Senate version of this discussion that I,

in a bill that I've introduced,

if we wanted to we could, without going into Title XI,

the criminal side,

we could make changes in Title XXVIII, the motor vehicle code,

so that if there's physical injury to the,

or not, if there's property damage, it's a misdemeanor level as it is today,

and then we could distinguish.

failure to stop when an injury occurs and have a different penalty in the motor vehicle code for failure to stop when death occurs.

Correct,

Mr.

Chairman, you could parse it out that way.

Yes.

Yes. Would that would that increasing the sentence for failure to stop when death occurs,

would that create incentives for people to stop, not worrying about whether they were at fault or not?

Or may— I don't know. Mr.

Mr. Chairman, I think you're asking me about deterrent effect,

and I just don't know if it would. I think that the penalty we have now is pretty severe for not stopping,

and as I noted, we don't get a lot of cases, but I can't tell you what the on-the-ground actual effect is. I don't know what Joe citizen is thinking,

you know, when they get into an accident.

Sure.

The, because one of the questions I've had, and so I'll ask.

ask you that question for purposes of giving the prosecutor's the maximum flexibility.

Are there advantages to having the failure to stop when death occurs being looked at separately from the driving conduct itself that may have been, there may be criminal liability for the driving itself,

but are there advantages from the prosecution perspective to have the failure to stop separated from the driving conduct itself?

So, Mr. Chairman, under um House Bill 239, the state would have to prove that the person acted in a criminally negligent manner and caused a death, so we would have to prove the causation and the criminally negligence um beyond a reasonable doubt. We would also then have to prove the failure to stop beyond a reasonable doubt. So that's more things to prove than under your hypothetical we would be proving that a death occurred and that the person did not stop.

So it is a little bit simpler of an analysis,

I think.

And it would be in the situation where he had two separate charges,

it would be two— it would appear as two separate charges in the —in the indictment in that case?

Mr.

Chairman,

that's correct.

And I believe it would have here as well because there's no reason for us not to bring a charge or failure to stop under this bill even if we have are charging on the enhanced penalty for the criminally negligent homicide so we would charge both.

But the criminally negligent homicide would now require proof of both the failure to stop and the criminally negligent homicide to get a conviction.

restriction under that charge?

Yeah, under that specific subsection for the enhanced or aggravated version of crim neg hom,

yes.

Okay. Okay.

Okay.

I don't think I have other questions.

Senator Stevens.

Well, it's just a question.

You know, as I look at this...

It helps say,

I think that's very effective. And I particularly think that new drivers, young kids who have never driven before should know this.

So if this were to pass,

what are you going to do about it? How are you going to let people know this?

I know you have some,

at least Department of Law, spend some money advertising on television.

Is this an intention of yours to bring focus on this matter?

Through the Chair to Senator Stevens, I don't know that the Department of Law has um done advertisements. Um that's usually not

Maybe it's the state troopers.

Yeah, it could be

Yeah.

that could be a different agency.

But I see it on T_V_ and uh

Um yeah, that's probably them. They're a lot better at that stuff than we are. Um but but the department law typically does not do education campaigns. Um but you might check with the troopers to see if they intend on doing something like that.

Mr Chairman, I I know this is a little off the subject, but I think it's really important that uh particularly when I think of the y

young kids just learning how to drive they never thought about it what if i hit someone and they probably haven't given any thought at all so i i'd hope that we somehow look at that and see is there going to be a result of this that has a good impact on our young drivers

Mr Mr Chairman, if I could, Gary's out for the record. This came up in the how and the other body's judiciary committee and uh there are two places and I'll provide this for the committee in the driver's manual. Uh when you go to D_M_V_ to take your licence there are two uh areas that touch on this about having an accident, stopping and rendering assistance, and uh again I'll provide that to cl to the committee afterwards.

And one more thing I if I could, sir. Um there's a packet of information on your desk uh through the chair, Senator Tobin. You'd asked about not only the criminalising of this offence, but what else is being done. And uh Mister zachary Hartman with the municipality of Anchorage, he's the traffic engineer manager up there, uh tremendous resource. And he provided uh some highlights b both on e email but then also the latest report from the municipality

municipality to show what's been accomplished and what is still left to accomplish to to increase the safety for pedestrians and so forth. Thank you.

Senator Toebin.

Thank you.

Thank you Mr. Chairman, and thank you, uh Mr. Zepp, for that. I I am definitely uh

considering Senator Stevens' there are so many kids who learn to drive not in an urban centre. I myself learned to drive in Nome, Alaska. And

I

I'm curious, particularly around that component of education.

So many of our young children are learning how to operate a vehicle in areas that don't have large amounts of pedestrian traffic.

This situation may just not necessarily be one that they're experienced with.

And I want to ensure that they know the law.

And I recognize it may be in the driver's manual.

I don't remember what the driver's manual said when I went through my driver's education experience.

So I'm curious if there is additional information that you can glean from what is being taught in our schools or what is being taught in our driver eds programs so that we can have confidence that students will receive this information prior to operating a vehicle.

Through the chair, Senator Dobbin, I'd be glad to look into it and get back to the committee.

Centre keel.

Mr. Chairman in a week or so when the education chair gives her committee some of the high school uh tests, I'm going to remind her that she can't remember what was in the dryer's manual when she sees my scores. Um there is a certain irony, I appreciate uh the sponsor providing this uh this information from the municipality of Anchorage on some of the um their attempts

To work with Alaska Department of Transportation to design in better pedestrian safety and design out occasionally some of the latent errors that lead to vehicle-pedestrian or vehicle-bicycle accidents, um there's a certain irony that they get a lot of resistance from Alaska D_O_T_ on doing those things. We had a transportation committee hearing in here that was very frustrating, when in fact the folks who run those ads about highway safety is the highway safety office at D_O_T_

Drives me bats. Um, Ms. uh Ms. Schroeder,

that there was powerful public testimony the last hearing.

um uh about one of the circumstances it gave rise to to this bill. And one of the the concerns I had is as they described um sort of the the history of the particular individual case um that that it seemed as though the fact pattern had supported m much more significant charges than in the end um there was a sentence for.

Can you talk to us about anything uh either in the bill or that could go into law that um that would help the department of law help prosecutors charge uh and and pursue more fully um

I guess crimes that that uh seem to fit the fact pattern little bit better than criminally negligent homicide seems to have fit that one.

Through the chair to a vice chair Kiel, I don't know of any law change that would make that situation better. It's always unfortunate when something like that happens. Um the cases sometimes change after they're charged and evidence changes or goes away, maybe a witness dies. And I'm not speaking to that case specifically, specifically I don't know what happened in that case and why that happened, but I do know that that's does sometimes happen. It's very disappointing for victims and it it's really unfortunate.

fortunate. Um but the prosecutor has to have the flexibility to resolve cases and and bring charges that are appropriate and that match the evidence. If there was any sort of effort to lock in a charge based on what it looked like when it came in, I just I don't think that that would achieve the results that perhaps would be intended. Um evidence does change, cases get stale you know all all of that is it plays into it. Um

And it we the prosecutor should be able to factor in new evidence uh that comes in after a case is charged. So I don't know any any law change that would um improve situations like that. And the prosecutor is always evaluating the evidence um and sometimes that means we have to adjust charges. And again, I'm not speaking to that case. I do not know what happened there.

Okay. Paul.

Follow-up?

Check you.

I think there are also, and I appreciate your discretion,

but I will say I think there are also significant resource constraints,

and that's a problem for the government's ability to pursue conduct in the interest of justice.

It leads me to a question that may be from the reverse side.

Is there a risk by increasing these penalties at the lower end of the severity ladder of criminally negligent homicide as opposed to manslaughter or other charges related to a death,

is there a risk in increasing these penalties that defendants are less likely to take a plea deal and we end up actually more resource constrained because if it's going to be years in jail,

may as well fight like hell.

Through the chair to Senator Keel, I I think that defendants factor in possible sentences obviously when considering any sort of

Right.

negotiation. Um nothing in this bill though prevents a prosecutor from downgrading the charge or um non-opping a mitigator perhaps. You know there are there are a lot of tools in the toolbox when it comes to negotiation. Um I don't see the increases that are talked about in this bill.

as something that would be a huge deterrent on resolving cases you know perhaps if you were going to increase the sentence to a max to a minimum of twenty years you know that might be a different conversation, but that's not what we're talking about here.

A couple of follow-up questions. You had provided me a case called named Wiley, which was a somewhat older court of appeals case. And

very and I p I we can have it provided to the rest of the committee so they can review but a case involving a man and woman driving and no one no one is nearby and the woman woman opens the car door and jumps out and the her the driver her husband drives on

And I think she's killed instantly. And some of the arguments that the husband had made was that there wasn't an accident and so he couldn't be charged with failure to leave of the scene of an accident. Uh can you tell the committee a little bit more about how the Wiley case kind of provides information for prosecutors and defense attorneys in terms of how these cases are viewed and and what conduct gets people, what conduct exposes people to criminal liability?

Mr. Chairman, uh that that is a good case. It's a good example of um a quote-unquote no fault um accident. So I think a lot of times when we're talking about hypotheticals with these bills, we're talking about people that are i in this bill specifically driving negligently, they are doing something to cause an accident. However, the failure to render aid uh statute applies regardless of who is at fault in the accident. All that is needed is that there is a causal connection

and between the the vehicle and the death or the injury. That and causal doesn't mean

That—

and causal doesn't mean

fault.

So in the Wiley case,

as you described,

the person voluntarily left the vehicle.

Like the driver did not do anything physically to make this person leave the vehicle, but he was still required to stop.

And to change the hypothetical,

if someone set a stop sign stopping as they're supposed to be and they're rear-ended but then they hit the gas,

that's an accident.

They need to stop. You need to stop and see if somebody needs assistance.

So one of the queries that I've had in maybe overthinking it, but especially with youth,

I think one of the concerns is that youth maybe have more of a tendency,

oh my gosh, I've been in an accident,

I better get out of here because I'm going to get in more trouble. And I think one of the one of the.

Reasons I have some interest in looking more at the Title 28 side of the equation on the motor vehicle code and less on the criminal side of the equation is that that value that if you're in an accident, don't think about did you make a, are you at fault,

think about what about this person that I just hit and if we're tying the criminal behavior to the crime for failure to stop, we actually.

In some inverted way,

we make people think, well, I better flee because I might have committed a crime.

So now they're thinking about themselves and they're not thinking about the person that they just hit.

And if we instead were...

focusing more on the Title 28 aspects and perhaps making a distinction between injury and death in Title 28 and then you have options if somebody doesn't stop regardless of the way they're behaving, we may actually be better at encouraging youth to realise the importance of stopping and caring for the person that just got hit as opposed to I better get out of here because I'm going to get in trouble.

I'm not sure that's a question,

but what are your thoughts on that?

What are your thoughts on, at least from being in the prosecutor's office,

are there advantages to having those two separate,

two things separate versus tied together?

Mr. Chairman,

I think that you're describing two different policy calls.

So the policy call in this bill,

the House bill,

is that if you are acting in a criminally negligent manner and you fail to stop,

that's going to aggravate your sentence and raise it.

But if you are, conversely though,

if you just want to focus on you need to stop,

the law says you need to stop, you're engaging in a licensed activity,

there are valid reasons why you need to stop.

up and so we're going to focus on that without regard for a causation then that that title 28 approach that you're describing would be what you want to do obviously if you're if you're talking about fault or acting in an incrementally negligent manner that's something that the prosecutor is going to have to prove so we would have that additional element that we'd have to prove that would not be there in the other scenario that you're describing and it's just and you know

From the prosecution perspective,

you guys are the policymakers.

I'm looking at what we would have to prove.

And so that's the analysis.

And one follow-up question then I'll go to you, Senator Tobin.

If you have a potentially higher penalty for failure to stop and death occurs,

you still have the charges today. We don't need to make any amendments to the criminally negligent homicide or manslaughter charges that you could bring today for the driving conduct itself.

Mr. Chairman, that's correct.

So if there was a death in your scenario and there was a higher level charge,

we would be looking at charging that.

But then also any sort of manslaughter or crim neg comm would also be a viable charge if the facts supported it and we could prove it.

And just to note for your,

I don't think that those two would merge. So I think you would still be able to have separate sentences for those.

two separate offenses.

Okay.

Senator Drummond.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Sorry,

And I,

I got ahead

no,

of your question.

Go ahead.

I appreciate that line of questioning, and I think Ms.

Schroeder said something that I just want to make sure I understand implications for.

So under this piece of legislation,

if,

for example, I am at a stop sign and I am playing on my phone or I'm looking at a text message and somebody rear ends me and I end up leaving that accident.

And yet the person who rear-ended me dies of a heart attack. They were having a cardiac arrest.

I could be held liable for their death, even though I didn't cause the accident,

but I was operating motor vehicle and fleed the scene that caused their death or that their death resulted in their death.

Through the chair to Senator Tobit, I just want to be clear,

the causation with the failure to render aid,

the Title 28 offense,

is the accident.

So it's the accident.

And your criminally negligent homicide,

that statute,

we have to prove that that criminally negligent behavior resulted in somebody's death.

So assuming that there is no criminally negligent behavior in your fact pattern.

we would be looking at the f the failure to render aid, the not stopping and seeing if somebody needed assistance. And there is a crime for that, and and and like I said, it doesn't really matter who caused the accident, just that an accident would happened and the person was aware that they they were in an accident.

Follow-up?

Looks like you're thinking.

I am,

Mr.

Chairman, I am thinking.

I'll give you a moment and I'll ask a different question.

You brought up the topic of merger.

I hadn't thought about merger in quite a while.

I understand if I understand between the t the present Title twenty eight offence

Even if we modified it so there was different penalties for injury versus injury and a different penalty for death and the criminally negligent homicide,

there's not a merger issue when you have that structure. But what about in Senate House Bill 239, if you've got a conviction under the new criminally negligent homicide with failure to stop as described in the bill,

is there a merger now issue between the...

Title 11 conviction for criminally negligent homicide aggravated by the failure to stop with the failure to stop charge under Title 28 that could be brought.

Mr. Chairman, just so the committee is clear,

merger is a double jeopardy issue.

It prevents the state from – well, it prevents two things. It prevents the successive prosecutions. We can't prosecute somebody indefinitely, and it also prevents somebody from being punished twice for additionally the same conduct.

However,

there is a lot of analysis that goes into a merger analysis. In the situation that's in this bill,

So under current law, we don't think that there is a merger problem.

We have not experienced a merger problem.

In the situation in this bill, we do not think that there is a merger issue.

We would liken this bill to felony murder.

So, for example, if you commit robbery and then in the course of that robbery somebody dies,

that's felony murder,

that's murder in the second degree.

So we're going to charge you with felony murder,

but then also the person would be charged with robbery and there would be separate sentences imposed for both.

And when the court looks at that stuff,

they really do defer to the intent of the legislature. That is a huge thing that they look at.

And there is actually a case that analyzes that specific fact pattern,

and they said in that situation,

the legislature clearly intended for two separate penalties.

And I think that with this situation,

I think the bill, the way it's drafted,

also indicates separate punishments, and the consecutive sentencing section in 239 is very telling for us. So that's how we would analyze it. The case that analyzes the robbery is Todd v.

Todd v. State.

So on the merger question in felony murder and the related felony in this case, armed robbery in a convenience store,

there's a clear crime of the robbery and then now shooting occurs and somebody's killed and that fits the felony murder,

but the robbery is at some level very separate from the murder.

the events that led to the murder, although they're certainly causally connected.

But it seems like here it's a little bit different because the failure to stop, which is both the failure to stop when a injury occurs is both a conviction under Title 28 and now that's going to be an aggravating factor that if you don't have that.

Exactly the same conduct of that failure to stop if you don't have that aggravating factor in the Title 11 conviction then you don't get the enhanced sentence.

It seems like the argument

The argument about merger is stronger between here between the Title 28 and the Title 11 aggravator because it is the same conduct, whereas in the murder case you've got a robbery conviction which somehow stands alone from the death.

I mean, they're certainly connected in the same way, but one can identify that there's sadly many robbery,

well,

it's actually a good thing there's lots of robberies occurred that don't have death.

But there are some times when both occur. But it seems to me here, if you're criminalizing leaving the scene,

there's really no distinction between the Title 28 and the Title 11 aggravator, which seems like a little different merger analysis than you have with felony murder and the underlying armed robbery,

or not the underlying, but the related armed robbery.

Mr Chairman.

sandwich are saying, and I I just want to be clear with the committee,

obviously we have not tested this exact thing, but that is the argument we would make. We believe that Todd supports that analysis because the robbery, if you look at the felony murder statute,

the robbery is an aggravating factor. It's an it's named.

So we would be convicting somebody of robbery and then also robbery and a death. And so the robbery is the aggravating factor. I mean and the court calls it

it calls felony murder an aggravated form of manslaughter.

And I think the analysis is similar here where this new subsection that's created by this bill is an aggravated form of criminal negligent homicide.

Thank you.

Other questions?

Senator Tobin, you had time to ponder.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm still trying to articulate my question in a way that

Wouldn't make sense to anyone else besides myself.

Do you want to take it? Should we go off record for a minute? Because I don't think anybody else

I

has got

do have

a a question.

question.

Senator Stevens.

Of the court system, I see Nancy Mead is in the audience. Could we ask her to come forward?

Absolutely.

Ms.

Mead.

Ms. Schroeder, you're more than welcome to say I think the odds that there's a follow-up question for you is higher than...

Follow-up question for Mr. Zapp and I don't mean that any disrespect to Mr.

Thank you, Ms. Reid. I was going to see you here in the building all the time. And so I guess maybe I'm responding to the anger in the public.

So many cases hit and runs.

The case we had a family speaking to us a couple of days ago,

their son was killed,

the driver ran off and the son died.

They were just really irate that they felt justice was denied them.

And so I was in front of my house maybe two years ago where a woman was struck and killed and the fellow drove off and the case was dismissed.

and also talking about family earlier,

that case was a plea deal that took place. So I guess I want to give the court an opportunity to help.

Why are we, am I just seeing only the worst cases?

It does seem to me like the public is quite angry when these cases are dismissed,

and maybe you can defend it by saying that you didn't have enough evidence,

but I don't think the court should weigh in on this issue.

Through the Chair to Senator Stevens,

for the record,

Nancy made General Counsel for the Alaska court system.

I will explain that plea deals, which are extremely common,

as you know,

both in felony and misdemeanors, are brokered by the prosecutor and the defender.

And so I would agree with what was said earlier by the Department of Law that charges can be brought of any.

type. And once that happens, whether a law enforcement officer or somebody else brings those charges to the attention of the Department of Law,

they need to do an analysis.

I think I would agree with Ms.

Schroeder that very often things happen. So they might get a charge that comes in that the law enforcement officer said this is a murder case and they take a look and they, you know, don't have the witnesses or

evidence goes stale or gone or a witness won't cooperate or a victim won't cooperate they need then need to think I mean their duty not to speak for her is to establish the facts beyond a reasonable doubt if they can't do that they have to do an analysis and make a decision it's extremely common that charges are brought down and the Department of Law has made the analysis that this is based

It's basically the best we can get against this person.

It is terribly frustrating to victims.

Maybe they expected that murder charge to hold and it's part of the system. It's nationwide that that's how it works.

In terms of, and then when they reach a plea deal,

the role,

the court's role is quite limited. Some attorneys reach a plea deal with

uh the sentence involved.

Okay,

I'll give you instead of manslaughter criminally negligent homicide with two years.

When that comes to the court for a change of plea,

because the person has pled not guilty,

now they're going to plead guilty as part of the deal, there is very little the court can do except see whether it is within the legal range because the court's file might be four inch, you know, four pieces of paper.

The Department of Law has done investigations. They know why they're doing it. They know who won't cooperate.

And so the court can basically merely say,

is this within the range?

Sometimes a court can reject a plea.

And indeed,

the testifiers the other day who had this tragedy occur,

there was a plea deal that the judge rejected and said, now come back. That is not severe enough.

Uh and then the judge did accept the second one. It doesn't happen very often, but that can occur. It just needs to be within the legal range,

um and so those are with limited information by the judge, they decide whether to accept a plea deal. But basically they're saying you guys know much better and if you guys all agree, uh as a judge, I don't have the information you have. With respect to dismissals, dismissals happen

happen by the prosecutor.

And again, Ms.

Schroeder can weigh in.

Almost all dismissals are by the prosecutor. Sometimes they're dismissing a case because that particular defendant had other cases as well, and they would rather get the conviction in,

you know, the incident that happened in September and dismiss the case in that where the person did something wrong in December,

but they're both pending.

And so they make a plea deal. We'll dismiss this one, but

but will take you to the mat in the other one.

Or same thing,

they lose the victims,

they,

you know, the evidence doesn't bear it out and they just decide in the interests of justice that they can't go forward with the prosecution of this individual.

So dismissals are about as common as plea deals.

And I don't know if that has illuminated it, but that's how the court views plea agreements.

Well, thank you. Thank you, Nancy.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Yeah,

I understand that. I mean, it's kind of put everyone in a very tough spot,

a very tough place to make that decision of what level to prosecute someone at.

And I'm just reflecting the public's upsetness when they feel that there should have been a stiffer sentence and it's either dismissed or plea deal is arranged. So I understand what you're saying and I appreciate that.

And Senator

Stevens, just on a personal note,

you'll see sometimes you see these bumper stickers on the cars about watch out for cyclists.

Jeff Duzenberry,

who was hit by a drunk driver early in the morning, he was a good friend of mine.

I know Jeff, yeah.

And I wonder, I wonder more if she had stopped whether he might be alive today.

And now.

young offender exactly the kind of folks we're talking about, but I think a lot about how do we encourage that s m behaviour to stop stop thinking about yourself and thinking about the person that just got hit.

Uh

in the other questions?

Hearing and seeing none.

We are going to adjourn for the day. Our next meeting will be on Monday, April 13 at 1:30 p.m. We will be holding public testimony on House Bill 239. We will also be holding a hearing on the consideration of the governor's appointee to the state board of parole, Steve Meyer.

We had originally scheduled a confirmation hearing for Grace Salazar for for um

Monday the 13th, but Ms. Salazar has some scheduling conflicts, so she will be coming to see us on Friday April 17th. With that we will stand adjourned. The time is now 2:14 p.m.