One of Alaska’s youngest convicted murderers won an appeal, opening door for others to be resentenced

A decision in an appeal by Winona Fletcher, the youngest female ever convicted of murder in Alaska, has opened the door for other young defendants sent to prison for life to have their sentences reexamined.

In a ruling last year, the Alaska Court of Appeals ruled that defendants like Fletcher should be sentenced based on a more modern understanding of juvenile offenders and their brain development.

Then, earlier this month, the appeals court said that ruling should apply retroactively, meaning Fletcher and a handful of others serving what are effectively life sentences could seek resentencing.

Anchorage Daily News reporter Michelle Theriault Boots, who has been covering the case, says there are thought to be no more than a dozen such defendants in Alaska, and there are no guarantees that anyone’s sentences will be reduced. But Theriault Boots says, so far, at least for Fletcher, a judge will reevaluate her sentence using the new criteria.

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This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Michelle Theriault Boots: There are some undisputed facts about this case. In 1985, Winona Fletcher and her then 19-year-old boyfriend broke into a home in the Russian Jack neighborhood, and they killed a husband and wife, Tom Faccio and Ann Faccio and Faccio’s 75-year-old sister. And she was, Fletcher was 14 at the time of the murders. The case was horrifying to Anchorage, you know, both because of the brutality of the crime — these older people being attacked in their home — and also because Fletcher was 14 years old. She was so young, and ultimately she was sentenced to 135 years in prison.

Casey Grove: Even then, as we do now, we have a separate juvenile justice system. And how does that work, that she then ends up being tried as an adult at the age of 14?

MTB: Yeah, for certain very serious crimes, juveniles can be waived into adult court, and that’s what happened in her case. But at some point, somebody had to make a decision that the crime was so grievously serious and that she had so few prospects for rehabilitation that she should be waived into adult court and should, you know, bear a sentence that is equivalent to a life sentence with no prospect of ever getting out.

CG: So like you said, I mean, it’s indisputable that there are just some horrifying facts about this case and that these people died and were murdered. But as far as how the justice system treats juvenile offenders and the thinking now versus back then, how has that changed?

MTB: Yeah, it’s really changed a lot. I would say that this decision is part of a larger reappraisal of juvenile life sentences that’s been happening nationally. And that’s because there’s much more research on the adolescent brain now that shows that teenagers really do not have the same decision-making capacity as adults do, and that they should be treated differently in the eyes of the law. And there’s a whole body of case law now about that, about why juveniles are just different in terms of criminal justice and punishment.

And so what the Alaska Court of Appeals found last year was that courts must look at things like the vulnerability of a defendant, their youth and their prospects of rehabilitation when sentencing. So that’s where we where we get this. So Winona Fletcher appealed her case, and eventually the Court of Appeals said yes, like her sentencing was not correct, she should be resentenced, and the court has to take into consideration these factors.

CG: As an appeal that has won on these points, it doesn’t just affect Winona Fletcher, it affects maybe up to a dozen people?

MTB: Right. It opens the door for other juvenile lifers, or close to juvenile lifers, to ask for their sentences to be re-looked at. Now, what it also does not mean is that any of these people will actually have their sentences reduced. It only means a judge could look at it and say, “Nope, that sentence was correct. It considered these factors, and it was absolutely a justified sentence.” But it gives them an opportunity to have some legal grounding in order to ask for their sentences to be reevaluated.

CG: Gotcha. So, I mean, like you said, there’s no guarantees that it will be reduced. But Winona, she’s been in prison for quite a long time, and what do her attorneys say, I guess, about the possibility that this might just be the end of prison for her?

MTB: I mean I don’t think that they’re willing to say anything about that possibility yet. I think her, what her attorney emphasized to me is that she has, you know, been a prisoner with very few disciplinary problems in recent decades and has done a lot of productive things, and that they hope she will have the opportunity to make her case for why she should have her sentence reduced. But it’s totally unclear, you know, it’s not known yet whether a judge will find that’s true, given the seriousness of of the underlying crime.

I think it’s also important to say that the, you know, family members of the victims in this case have for many, many years, you know, strongly opposed attempts for parole or for other challenges and have reminded the public of what a horrific crime this was. And I think that it’s important to acknowledge that they are still out there, and they they have a very different view on this.