Working as a Public Defender in the State of Alaska has opened my eyes to systemic problems facing Alaska Native criminal defendants. The importance of this coming election to much needed reforms cannot be overstated.
Any polling place irregularities that serve to disenfranchise Native voters and affect the outcome of the Alaska State House and Senate races could prove detrimental to much needed changes to the State’s Bail Statute, for example.
Specifically, the "Third Party Custodianship" requirement for criminal defendants charged with a crime but awaiting trial has become so overused by District Attorneys and judges that the result has been to effectively erase one’s right to a trial by jury in misdemeanor cases. Third party custodians are full-time baby-sitters, are requested by the District Attorney’s office, mandated by the courts, and hard to find/get approved by the court if you’re a criminal defense attorney.
The problem with TPC has been its dramatic overuse. Although originally intended by the State legislature to be an ALTERNATIVE to monetary bail in cases where the defendant lacked the financial means to "bail out" while awaiting trial, the TPC requirement is imposed in every felony cases AS WELL AS IN ALMOST EVERY MISDEMEANOR CASE. The TPC requirement is also being imposed IN ADDITION TO MONETARY BAIL.
This practice has made it extremely difficult for defendants to bail out pre-trial, thereby coercing "guilty pleas" out of defendants who would otherwise go to trial. The State is well aware of the difficulty involved with both finding and then getting approved TPCs, and for that very reason make it a practice of requesting a TPC in every case. Knowing that the practice reduces the total # of misdemeanor trials, the judges then follow suit, approve the DAs’ TPC requests, and then once a TPC is located deny approval of the TPC in order to keep the defendant in jail.
Much needed reforms to the bail statute that would reserve TPC for only those cases where the defendant lacks the means to get out of jail OR where the defendant poses a SERIOUS risk to the public in a FELONY case, can only come about by achieving a Democratic majority in the State Senate.