Alaska
Court of Appeals orders resentencing in 1985 Winona Fletcher triple murder case
/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/gray/26EESEEORJBM3F2HXBIOSEZ4QE.png "Court of Appeals orders resentencing in 1985 Winona Fletcher triple murder case")
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) – The Alaska Court of Appeals says the state must revisit Winona Fletcher’s 135-year prison sentence. Fletcher was the youngest woman ever convicted of murder in Alaska at age 14 after she was found guilty of the murders of two women in a 1985 triple homicide case.
On April 22 of 1985, Fletcher, along with 19-year-old Cordell Boyd, broke into the home of 69-year-old Tom Faccio and his 70-year-old wife Ann in the Russian Jack neighborhood. Boyd and Fletcher had planned a robbery, but ultimately shot and killed the elderly couple, along with Ann’s 76-year-old sister Emma Elliot, who was present at the time of the break-in.
The sensational nature of the crime made the case a lightning rod in Alaska, amid a national tough-on-crime atmosphere that pushed for strong criminal sentences.
Boyd pled guilty to the murder of Tom Faccio, and Fletcher pled no contest to the murder of Ann Faccio and Emma Elliot. Fletcher was tried as an adult because the court found her resistant to potential rehabilitation.
Court documents say Fletcher had a “chaotic living environment” and “experienced sexual, physical, and emotional abuse from the key adults in her life.” Fletcher’s mother testified that Boyd began a sexual relationship with Fletcher when he was 18 and she was 13 after she had lost her home and was working as a prostitute in Anchorage.
Fletcher’s mother also claimed the murder was Boyd’s idea, and a counselor at McLaughlin Youth Center said Fletcher was dependent on Boyd and would follow his orders. However, Boyd testified Fletcher “showed little reluctance to participate in the crimes” and said the murder was actually Fletcher’s idea. Boyd’s testimony was the basis for the court’s finding that Fletcher was not coerced or manipulated into the two murders. By the time of his testimony, Boyd had made a plea deal, and he later recanted his testimony and “told Fletcher’s attorney that he had lied during his testimony.” In an interview days after Fletcher was convicted, Boyd said he “directed Fletcher to kill both women.”
Fletcher was given two consecutive 99-year prison sentences for each murder — later adjusted to three 45-year sentences — for a total of 135 years.
Fletcher has since appealed that sentence, claiming new research and changed legal standards undermine the original conviction, and that her sentence meets the standard for cruel and unusual punishment because the court didn’t provide a “meaningful opportunity to obtain release based on demonstrated maturity and rehabilitation”.
In an opinion issued on May 12, Chief Judge Marjorie K. Allard writing for the Alaska Court of Appeals said a series of U.S. Supreme Court decisions have changed the legal standard for juvenile sentencing, concluding that “children are constitutionally different from adults for purposes of sentencing” because modern research on child development undermines the “justifications for imposing the harshest sentences on juvenile offenders, even when they commit terrible crimes.”
Allard wrote that, “The Alaska Constitution requires a sentencing court to consider a juvenile offender’s youth and its attendant characteristics before sentencing a juvenile tried as an adult to the functional equivalent of life without parole.” Allard also wrote that the sentencing judge failed to properly consider the relevancy of Fletcher’s age and traumatic life experiences when evaluating her potential for rehabilitation.
The court found that “assuming this new constitutional rule is retroactive, the defendant in this case, Winona M. Fletcher, is entitled to a resentencing in which her youth and its attendant characteristics are properly considered.”
Fletcher won’t necessarily be released or even have her sentence reduced — the decision only means the Alaska Superior Court must now reconsider her sentence in light of the Court of Appeals’ analysis. Fletcher is now 53 years old and is eligible for parole under the current sentence at age 60.
The larger implication for other appeals of past juvenile convictions remains to be seen. Victims’ advocates are concerned that this will drag up old wounds for victims and their families.
“Having decades-old wounds ripped back open should never be taken lightly. These victims and survivors and loved ones will be transported back to some of the worst days of their lives.” said Suki Miller, executive director of Victims for Justice.
Victims for Justice was founded in 1985 by the daughters of Tom and Ann Faccio to advocate for victims’ rights within the legal system.
The Alaska Superior Court’s resentencing hearing has not been scheduled.
Copyright 2023 KTUU. All rights reserved.
Alaska
Youngest Alaskan woman convicted of murder could see case reexamined under new Court of Appeals ruling
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) – After the murder of three Anchorage residents — a husband, wife and the wife’s sister — in 1985, Winona Fletcher was sentenced to 135 years in prison for her role in the grisly killings.
She was charged in the case when she was just 14 years old.
Now, following a new court of appeals ruling, she has the chance to have her case reexamined.
Last year, the Alaska Court of Appeals found that when sentencing juvenile defendants, the trial courts must consider on the record how juveniles are fundamentally different from adults.
On Aug. 9 of this year, the appeals court came to the conclusion that that decision is to be retroactive, and thus should also apply to past offenders — including Fletcher.
“We agree with the superior court’s conclusion that the Fletcher decision should be fully retroactive to those cases on collateral review, where juvenile offenders have received the functional equivalent of a life without parole sentence,” the ruling stated.
Fletcher and her 19-year-old boyfriend were sentenced for the murders of Tom Faccio, 69; his wife, Ann Faccio, 70; and Ann’s sister, Emelia Elliot, who was 75 years old at the time of her death.
With the conviction in the case, Fletcher was the youngest female to ever be convicted of murder in Alaska.
Fletcher’s attorney, Marcy McDannel, said that the state’s court of appeals is following a broader national trend regarding harsher sentences given to youth offenders, which she said started with the U.S. Supreme Court. She said that while Alaska is far from the forefront — and is actually lagging behind — she believes the state is unquestionably moving in the right direction.
“This decision recognizes the science that says that children don’t have fully developed brains and are very much at the mercy of their environment,” McDannel said. “That has a huge impact on their behavior, and that needs to be taken into consideration when deciding how we treat children, even when they’ve done something terrible.”
Suki Miller, however, disagrees. Miller serves as the executive director of Victims For Justice, which was founded in 1985 by Janice Faccio Lienhart and Sharon Faccio Nahorney, the two daughters of Tom and Ann Faccio.
Miller said that every time there is a new hearing of any kind, it retraumatizes victims and their family members, making the process of moving forward and healing nearly impossible.
“They’re always talking about, maybe, that they’ve been in there for a long time,” Miller said. “Victims are dead for a long time, they don’t come back, they don’t get second chances, they don’t get hearings, they’re gone.
“So it’s really hard for victims to go through that, and hear the different types of rehabilitation that the offender was able to have when their loved ones will never have that chance.”
Resentencing for Fletcher under the new criteria is currently scheduled for December 2024.
McDannel, who said Fletcher’s original sentence is now unconstitutional under Alaska statute, said the state is making efforts to have the Alaska Supreme Court review the court of appeals’ decision before the resentencing, which could potentially hold the process up for an undetermined amount of time.
She added that she’s hopeful the courts will allow the process to move forward, to give Fletcher the benefit of the appeals court’s ruling.
Copyright 2024 KTUU. All rights reserved.
Alaska
Alaska Supreme Court hears arguments in case seeking to keep ranked vote repeal measure off ballot
Alaska
Road section removed at Alaska’s Katmai National Park to protect archaeological sites • Alaska Beacon
A 200-foot piece of dirt road that was punched into Katmai National Park and Preserve 10 years ago has been removed so the site can be revert to its natural state, protecting archaeological features there.
The small bit of road near Lake Brooks was built by mistake, without proper consultation with regional Native tribes and Native organizations, the National Park Service said. It wound up covering parts of two underground sod homes, sites known in Alutiiq culture as ciqluaqs and in Russian as barabaras.
Originally intended as tool to shorten an existing service road and help keep vehicles from getting too close to an historic cabin that had been hit a couple of times by buses, the road section was never actually used, said Mark Sturm, Katmai’s superintendent. The problems it caused became apparent shortly after it was built in the summer of 2014, he said.
“It was not appropriate for us to have done that, and certainly not to have done it in the absence of having done our due diligence,” said Sturm, who was not at Katmai at the time. Construction of the road section “upset a bunch of people,” he said.
“The biggest thing that we did wrong was to have done that work without having done proper consultation and without having done proper historic preservation,” he said.
The removal, which was completed last week, required some delicate work, including some hand digging around the two barabara sites, Sturm said. It was also the subject of an agreement between several Native organizations and the park, and a tribal representative monitored the work, according to the park.
Beyond this bit of road, the park has reformed its practices to ensure proper tribal consultation and prevent any similar problems in the future, Sturm said. “We have our ducks in our row,” he said. “We’re doing it right now.”
Katmai National Park and Preserve, which sprawls over 4 million acres, is known for its salmon-eating bears, its lakes and its volcanic landscapes. It is the setting for an annual online event called Fat Bear Week, which has drawn global audiences of people casting their votes for the bears considered to have been most successful at packing on weight in preparation for winter hibernation.
Katmai has been part of the U.S. national park system for more than a century. It was established as a national preserve in 1918, then expanded several times later until it was established in its present form through the 1980 Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act.
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