The Alaska Senate panel is unveiling a crime package with tougher drug penalties and grand jury changes

JUNEAU — The Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday introduced an omnibus crime bill that combines various criminal justice reform proposals into a single package as the end of the legislative session nears.

The 39-page crime bill – House Bill 66 – imposes tougher penalties for drug offenses after Alaska reported its highest rate of fatal opioid overdoses ever in 2023 to protect victims of crime. There are also provisions to close a gap in the state's sex offender registry.

Under the law, crime victims would not have to appear in person before grand juries. This change would allow law enforcement officials to summarize a victim's statement or show a video of the victim's statement in a grand jury proceeding. Groups like the Alaska Children's Alliance advocated for the change, saying it is particularly important for younger crime victims.

“Forcing traumatizing events to retell traumatizing events in front of a large group of strangers in the grand jury through the Alaska trial inflicts unnecessary trauma on already traumatized children,” the group said in a statement.

Thirty-three states allow evidence to be presented in this manner before grand juries to obtain an indictment, which in Alaska is constitutionally required for a felony charge to be tried in court. Anchorage Democratic Sen. Matt Claman, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said the change would bring the state of Alaska into compliance with federal grand jury procedures. He said this would be particularly impactful for victims of sexual assault and abuse.

“It’s a significant step toward protecting victims’ rights,” he said of the Dunleavy administration’s proposed provisions.

Another set of provisions proposed by the Dunleavy administration in the Senate bill would impact the state's sex offender registry.

In 2019, the Legislature passed a measure requiring out-of-state sex offenders to be placed on the state's sex offender registry if they move to Alaska. However, the change was not retroactive, meaning an offender convicted of a sex offense before 2019 does not have to register in Alaska. HB 66 would close this loophole.

“I think it was more of a design error than anything else,” Claman said.

[Alaska Senate budget crafters reduce dividend size in effort to avoid draw from savings]

Sex offender registry provisions and those related to grand juries were cited last week by Republican Reps. Craig Johnson and Sarah Vance as key legislative priorities for the Republican-led House majority this year. Claman on Monday called those two policy changes the most important provisions of the measure.

Another set of provisions comes from a bill passed by the Senate last year that was intended to close a loophole related to involuntary commitments. Angela Harris was stabbed two years ago at the Loussac Library in Anchorage, leaving her in a wheelchair. A judge had found her attacker incompetent to stand trial on charges related to random attacks on two other women months ago in midtown Anchorage.

These provisions proposed by Claman require the state to file a petition for involuntary commitment to a mental institution for such individuals if they have committed certain violent crimes and are found incompetent to stand trial. The bill would also extend the allowable period of involuntary commitment to two years from the current maximum of 180 days.

Civil rights groups have raised concerns about the impact of prolonged involuntary commitments on constitutional due process rights. The Disability Law Center of Alaska was concerned about how the long-struggling Alaska Psychiatric Institute would handle additional patients.

A proposal from Vance that passed the House in March was also included in the Senate crime package. It would rename “child pornography” in state law to “child sexual abuse material.” Vance said last week that “these are crimes against children.” She said the new terminology would better reflect the nature of the crime.

Harsher drug penalties

A contentious set of provisions in the bill aim to combat the rapid rise in deaths in Alaska linked to fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that can be 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine.

A person convicted of distributing opioids or meth that directly results in a person's death now faces a charge of second-degree murder instead of manslaughter. Penalties would increase from a maximum of 20 years in prison to a mandatory minimum of 15 years and a maximum of 99 years.

In a brief interview after Monday's hearing, Claman argued for longer prison sentences for drug offenses after Alaska saw a nearly 40% increase in opioid-related deaths last year.

“People are dying because of access to illegal drugs,” he said. “And I think under the circumstances it is appropriate to impose this higher sentence.”

[Head prison doctor named as Alaska’s new chief medical officer]

Someone convicted of giving opioids to another person can currently face a prison sentence of four to seven years; HB 66 would increase the maximum sentence for this offense to 11 years. There would be no minimum amounts of these drugs to receive the maximum sentence.

While the fentanyl crisis has been cited as a reason for the harsher penalties, the bill would apply those penalties more broadly to the two most serious state drug laws. These medications include drugs such as heroin and oxycodone, but also ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms.

Proponents of tougher drug sentences say they can act as a deterrent and encourage lower-level drug dealers to testify against higher-level drug dealers.

“We have to make it very, very clear. You have no excuse if you give fentanyl to innocent people. We will bring you the full extent of the law,” Vance said at a news conference last week.

At Monday's hearing, Angela Kemp, chief of the Alaska Department of Law's criminal division, answered questions from Democrats about how longer prison sentences could effectively address Alaska's fentanyl crisis.

“While incarceration alone will certainly never be the solution to all of our problems, I think it helps encourage individuals to assist during the rehabilitation process. And I realize that might sound naive and maybe silly in context, but it actually works on its own,” she said.

Democrats, independents and moderate Republicans were overwhelmingly more skeptical that second-degree murder charges would reduce demand for drugs or that they would help secure drug traffickers' convictions. According to the Alaska Court System, there have been two drug-related manslaughter convictions in the past 15 years.

Multiple national studies have found that treating the opioid crisis as a public health emergency rather than using more stringent criminal enforcement was more effective. Some Alaska Reconstruction advocates said last year that drug traffickers would invariably face tougher penalties for drug users.

The latest version of HB 66 had its first hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday. The hearing in the Finance Committee is scheduled for Friday. The regular legislative session must end at midnight on May 15th.