An Anchorage judge ordered Tuesday that Alexandra Ellis, who was convicted of a fatal hit-and-run in 2014, will be granted more than eight months of credit toward her sentence for time spent in a treatment facility.
The order was handed down in favor of Ellis despite objections from the victim's family and their legal representative in the case, Trina Sears of the Alaska Office of Victims' Rights.
Ellis, 18, was sentenced in August to a year in prison for the death of cyclist Jeff Dusenbury, whom she hit while driving intoxicated on July 19, 2014. She'd pleaded guilty in May to criminally negligent homicide and driving under the influence.
She is receiving 252 days' credit, according to the order.
Dusenbury's family said in a prepared statement that they are extremely disappointed the judge decided to give Ellis credit off "her already deficient one-year sentence for time spent in an adolescent rehabilitation center."
Sears argued at a hearing earlier this week that there was no order from the court placing Ellis into the program Volunteers of America Adolescent Residential Center for Help, or ARCH.
The Alaska Legislature sets the criteria for granting credit for time spent in residential treatment facilities, which includes a judge ordering participation as a condition of bail.
Anchorage Superior Court Judge William Morse wrote in his order that it's true he didn't verbally state Ellis must go to the ARCH program during her arraignment, but the parties had come to an agreement.
"There are no talismanic words that the Court must express in order that a bail condition is imposed," Morse said. "The parties presented their agreement to the Court and it implicitly adopted all terms of the agreement. There can be no question that her residence at and participation in the ARCH program was a condition of bail."
The victims' rights office also argued that a trip Ellis took to the Alaska State Fair while enrolled in the program disqualified her from receiving credit. Judge Morse decided Ellis proved through testimony the trip was part of the program and she was under strict supervision, meeting the requirements of state law.
Ellis' testimony also brought to light that she attended church on Sundays and left the facility with her parents on two occasions. Morse found she followed the rules in those instances.
Dusenbury's daughter, Madisen Holder-Dusenbury, and Melissa Holder, her mother, disagree with the findings.
"To equate that to jail time is outrageous to us," they said.
District Attorney Clint Campion said Morse's order is consistent with the law. The defense met its burden of proof at the most recent hearing, he said.
The Legislature codified the law regarding credit for time spent in treatment in 2007, Campion said. The credit is available to anyone who completes treatment in accordance with the law before sentencing, he said.
"It's not only applied to someone like Ms. Ellis," Campion said. "We have a wide range of defendants in terms of demographics and socio-economic factors that are potentially eligible for this."
There have been recent updates to the law, as well. As recently as 2014, the Legislature expanded the ways defendants can get sentence credit, such as electronic monitoring.
According to court testimony, Ellis will likely spend two to three months in jail as a result of the granted credit. That length of incarceration doesn't offer Dusenbury's family closure, Holder-Dusenbury said.
"Not only does it not offer closure, but we find it insulting. Ms. Ellis has not reached out to my family, and until she has shown some kind of remorse and taken responsibility for killing my father and leaving him on the street to die, I don't have any interest in hearing from her or her family," she said.
Ellis is set to begin her sentence May 2, after her college semester ends.