Alaska editorials

Here is a sampling of Alaska editorials:

Oct. 11, 2018

Ketchikan Daily News: Step by step

When it comes to building the economy in communities throughout Alaska, it’s one step at a time.

A two-day span recently showed what that looks like in a couple of ways.

The closest to home is Viking Lumber’s new product - a firelog.

The sawmill company, with operations on Prince of Wales Island, has used excess trimmings and sawdust to compress and create firelogs.

The Viking firelogs are being marketed by a distributor, Tongass Wholesale Distribution, which has secured a distribution deal with Walmart; the log will be sold in Walmart’s Alaska stores.

It’s the type of innovation that Alaskans appreciate in an industry that has been operating for decades in Alaska, and it’s a product Alaskans will buy.

Also of note when it comes to the Alaska economy is ConocoPhillips’ newly flowing oil from the first drill site built on federal land in a nearly 100-year-old oil reserve - the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska.

The drill site has the potential to increase from nine wells to 33 and reach a peak production of 25,000 to 30,000 barrels of oil daily.

The field has generated about 700 jobs during the past two winters.

While different in many ways, both endeavors involve getting a product to market. The finished products are derived from Alaska’s natural resources.

This might be the beginning of bigger business for both companies. The potential is there, and, if successfully captured, could be integral to Alaska and its communities.

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Oct. 14, 2018

Anchorage Daily News: The Justin Schneider case exposed problems in Alaska’s justice system

When Justin Schneider received a plea deal that allowed him to avoid jail time in a sexually motivated assault case that shocked Alaskans, many were justifiably outraged. The punishment didn’t fit the crime, and the leniency of the sentence was difficult to square with any notion of justice. Unfortunately, one of the targets of the greatest ire in the wake of the sentence is Superior Court Judge Michael Corey, in whose lap the plea deal landed. It’s understandable that Alaskans are looking for a way to make sure such an outcome doesn’t occur again, but singling out Judge Corey isn’t the right way to make sure of that.

The timeline of Schneider’s case as it moved through the Alaska court system is a tragedy of errors that led up to an improper outcome. At junctures throughout the process, decisions were made that lessened the severity of the consequences Schneider faced for the egregious incident in August 2017 in which, according to a police report, he choked and threatened to kill a woman before masturbating on her.

The first error was in Alaska’s laws themselves: Schneider’s act wasn’t classified as sexual assault. When the law was written, legislators didn’t consider the possibility of such an incident, so it wasn’t included in the definition. This error is so plain that Gov. Bill Walker has already proposed legislation to revise Alaska’s legal definitions to classify Schneider’s act as a sex offense - one punishable by between two and 12 years of prison time.

Subsequent issues in the case speak to the municipality and state’s overburdened law enforcement and criminal justice divisions. Schneider’s financial ability to hire effective private defense counsel was helpful in convincing a Superior Court judge to allow him to stay out of jail on electronic monitoring. Law enforcement, dealing with a swarm of other cases, lost track of the victim in the case. Prosecutors didn’t subpoena her to compel her testimony in the case of a potential trial.

As happens in more than 95 percent of criminal cases nationwide, the Schneider case was resolved via plea bargain. That statistic is likely shocking to many Alaskans, but it’s a near-inevitable consequence of a system in which the number of cases charged exceeds the capacity in time, space and funding for trials by orders of magnitude. It’s a cold, hard reality that if prosecutors took every case to trial - or even half of them - the system would grind to a halt almost immediately, which would have the unintended consequence of forcing the release and dismissal of many defendants’ cases because of their right to a speedy trial.

Having lost contact with the victim and with more than a year elapsed since the incident, state attorneys were in a bind, and opted to cut a deal that dropped all the charges except one count of second-degree assault. It was far less than had been originally charged, but they ran the risk of not being able to secure the victim’s testimony at trial, without which the case would be exceptionally difficult to win.

When the deal came before Judge Corey, his options were few and limited. He wasn’t legally allowed to consider the charges that had been dropped in considering the sentence agreed upon by the prosecution and defense, only whether the sentence is appropriate for the remaining charges. The sentence of one year in custody and one year suspended was within the 0-2 year range allowed under Alaska law, so if Judge Corey had rejected it, his decision would very likely have been overturned on appeal.

Was there more that could have been done? Judge Corey could have asked for a pre-sentencing report before agreeing to a sentence, which would have allowed prosecutors and defense attorneys to debate Schneider’s prospects for rehabilitation and argue aggravating and mitigating factors that could have affected the sentence. That would have allowed state attorneys to make a case as to the seriousness of Schneider’s conduct - but it would also have allowed the defense to bring up his lack of prior offenses. It’s hard to know with any certainty whether it would have helped reach a different outcome.

Judge Corey was unanimously recommended for retention by the Alaska Judicial Council. He was given a 4-out-of-5 rating by attorneys who came before him and a 5-out-of-5 rating by jurors. These recommendations should not be taken lightly; they represent a robust survey of the judge’s four years on the bench.

Alaskans have a right to be outraged at the outcome of the Schneider case. But selecting Judge Corey as a scapegoat for a system with problems over which he had no control doesn’t help ensure justice for future victims.

By the time the case reached Judge Corey’s desk, the opportunities to provide true justice were past. He should not be held singularly responsible for the failures in the process before him. Most of the opportunities to ensure justice for future victims - closing loopholes in laws, providing funding for public safety and the Department of Law to more aggressively prosecute sex offenses - lie in the hands of the Legislature. Alaskans who want justice for victims should petition the candidates running for office to make those changes, not make Judge Corey a sacrificial lamb for a broken system.

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Oct. 15, 2018

Fairbanks Daily News-Miner: Lessons learned after meme controversy

Mayor Jim Matherly sparked outrage among many in Fairbanks and the Interior on Sept. 29 when a meme that mocked professor Christine Blasey Ford was shared from his Facebook account. The meme was a photograph of Dr. Ford, with right hand raised as she is apparently being sworn in to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee. The meme had the logo of the Nike shoe brand in the upper left corner, and at the bottom are the words “Believe in something, even if you can’t remember anything.” The meme was a parody of Nike’s Colin Kaepernick ad campaign.

Before the weekend was over, Mayor Matherly threw gasoline on the fire when he issued a feeble apology, saying his girlfriend posted the meme from his account. The flames of outrage only grew after the mayor’s Facebook page went dark. The mayor laid low the first week in October.

Mayor Matherly’s meme had a way of localizing all the controversy of the confirmation hearings of Judge Brett Kavanaugh. The many Interior Alaskans, concerned about having a justice on the U.S. Supreme Court who possibly committed sexual assault then perceived an enabler of that deviant behavior in Fairbanks’ top elected official.

The meme controversy culminated in an emotionally charged City Council meeting Monday. For the first time in recent memory, sexual violence was front and center at City Hall. It was an eye-opening meeting in which many used the public commenting period to share their own stories of surviving sexual violence. Many explained why it was so difficult to report their experiences, and some even explained why they still had not reported sexual assault out of fear of retaliation. Many shamed the mayor for perpetuating rape culture.

Brenae Baker explained to the mayor why sharing the meme about Dr. Ford was so offensive, especially coming from an elected official:

. The meme promoted the idea that stories of sexual assault survivors are not to be taken seriously.

. Mocking sexual assault survivors is permissible and that it is funny.

Another commenter, Rose O’Hara, would later add, “This is not the kind of leadership we need when our community is in the midst of a sexual violence epidemic.”

They are both right. If Fairbanks and Alaska are going to stomp out this epidemic, the culture is going to have to change. One place to start is by dispelling the fears associated with reporting sexual assault and moving away from rape culture. The issue of sexual assault is not just a feminist issue. It’s not just a women’s issue. It’s everyone’s issue. Our elected officials can help us by taking a strong stance against sexual violence and using their legislative powers to fight it.

Mayor Matherly could have easily lashed out at his critics. Instead, he laid low and sought to understand why people would be so upset about the meme. To do so, he spoke to survivors of sexual assault and counselors who deal with sexual assault survivors. The mayor told the public assembled at City Hall that he had not thought about how something like that meme could be hurtful.

“I truly understand the anger now,” he said. Mayor Matherly also took ownership of his social media and offered a contrite apology. He delivered, and most people forgave him.

A lot of lessons can be gleaned from this meme-generated storm about accountability, responsibility, social media use, apologies, change and forgiveness. The main lesson is more of a reaffirmation of an ugly truth that many of us have pushed into the back of our minds: The sexual assault epidemic is affecting our family members, friends, neighbors and community - and it can no longer be ignored. We have a lot of work to do.