Two Alaska State Troopers facing assault charges over alleged conduct during their arrest of the wrong man in Kenai last year won't go to trial until next February, after a judge pushed the trial date back Wednesday.
Former trooper Sgt. Joseph Miller Jr., 50, and Jason Woodruff, 43, each face a felony assault charge in Kenai Superior Court. The state charged the officers last summer after body-worn camera footage appeared to show them beating and Tasing as well as siccing a police dog on Benjamin Tikka near Kenai's Daubenspeck Park last spring. Troopers later said they'd been attempting to arrest Tikka's cousin, who shares the same last name, for failing to appear for a 10-day jail sentence.
Miller and Woodruff were initially charged with, and pleaded not guilty to, a misdemeanor assault. Then a Kenai grand jury uppped those charges to felony assault, to which they also pleaded not guilty.
The troopers' trial was originally scheduled for this June. But on Thursday, their lawyers asked for more time. Superior Court Judge Thomas Matthews scheduled a pretrial check-in hearing for later this year, and a new tentative trial date of February 2026.
If the case goes to trial next February, it will be almost two years after the assault is alleged to have occurred.
"As you're all aware, there's certainly emphasis on trying to get all cases to trial," Matthews said. "This one is not certainly the oldest one in the court system, but I'm sensitive to the right of the victim, to the desire to get these cases moving forward."
Thursday's hearing comes amid a statewide backlog of trial cases and lengthy pretrial delays. An investigation published earlier this year by the Anchorage Daily News and ProPublica found some cases delayed as long as a decade.
Shortly after, the Alaska Supreme Court put new limits on how long a criminal case can be postponed. The order takes effect May 12 and limits delays to 270 days for cases filed in or after 2022.
Darryl Thompson, who's representing Tikka in the case, said during the hearing he's not surprised the delay was requested.
"Well, we've been sad for the victim that he has to be out there even longer to get their day in court, to be heard and to have that justice be met," Thompson said. "But as a defense attorney, I do understand that lots of things can happen."
Clint Campion, Woodruff's attorney, said in response to Thompson that he and his client spent three full days reviewing case material.
"This is not a matter where we haven't been diligently working through discovery, but there's a lot of material to discover," Campion said. "It's a relatively novel case for the state."
Matthews says he hopes to set a firm trial date at the August hearing. Matthews is based in Anchorage. He was assigned the case after all of Kenai's three superior court judges recused themselves from the case.
A trooper spokesperson said Wednesday via email that Miller is no longer employed by the state of Alaska. Woodruff is still employed by the state, but was taken out of service when the department learned about the Tikka arrest. The police dog deployed in the arrest is no longer with the department.
Miller and Woodruff's lawyers each said Thursday they're preparing motions to dismiss their clients' respective indictments.
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