Whitney Bostick became Juneau’s new district attorney in November.
Bostick grew up in Palmer and previously worked in the Anchorage district attorney’s office and as a private attorney, often representing domestic violence victims. The Juneau district attorney serves northern Southeast communities between Wrangell and Yakutat.
According to a recent report from the Anchorage Daily News, pretrial delays across the state are creating a backlog for the court system. Bostick sat down with KTOO to discuss her background and plans to address these delays.
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Audio PlayerThis transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.
Whitney Bostick: When I graduated in 2010, I came back and worked for a private law firm in Anchorage, doing family law and criminal defense for about eight years as a practicing attorney.
I law clerked and interned in that office for a little bit before I passed the bar. Doing primary family law and criminal defense for that private law firm, I interacted a lot with victims of domestic violence. And I had grown up always wanting to be a prosecutor in some fashion, and I got to a point when I was in private practice that I wanted to get back to feeling more fulfilled in what I was achieving and what I was doing and how I was helping my community.
And that work with the domestic violence victims that I had when I was in private practice just kind of kept pulling me to wanting to do more to help them. So that’s when I started looking into switching to do prosecution and working for the State.
Yvonne Krumrey: So what brought you to this role in Juneau from Anchorage?
Whitney Bostick: Sometimes it happens that different offices need help, staffing-wise, for various reasons. And in December of 2023, I had volunteered to come down to help for two weeks, for a two week period. And at the time, the district attorney position was open, and I came down, and the team here, working with them was great.
I clicked really well with a group of people that were here. The community is wonderful and gorgeous. You can’t beat the views that you have from downtown by any, any stretch of the imagination. And I got here and immediately — clicking with everybody, everybody, you know, we’re all of the same mind of the goal that we’re working towards. And we all worked really well together.
And it took some time for me, personally to like, one, see the ability myself to have this role, once I had the time to think about it, then I was like, “I can’t not apply.” And I felt like the group of people that I’d be working with here, I felt like I was doing them a disservice by not applying. And being down here and helping them and supporting them, because that’s always how I’ve envisioned myself, as a leader, as supporting the people that I’m working with to be able to do their job better.
Yvonne Krumrey: How does your background in domestic violence inform the work you do for the district attorney’s office?
Whitney Bostick: Some of the hardest things we’re doing are the cases that we can’t proceed on because we can’t prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. And that’s not to say we don’t believe it didn’t happen, but we have to evaluate, “Can we actually prove this to either a jury of six or a jury of 12 beyond a reasonable doubt?” And those are sometimes some of the most difficult conversations we have.
Because somebody who’s had the worst experience you can possibly imagine to them, that’s not what they’re having to consider. And it’s hard to explain what our criminal justice system is like and the realities of that, while also telling them that “I hear what you went through and that is valid,” and validate their feelings in a way that they don’t feel like they can never come and seek assistance again .
Because we don’t want that. Ultimately, we want them to feel like they can always come back and say, you know, go report to law enforcement or come to us and talk about what they’ve experienced.
Yvonne Krumrey: What would you like the public to know about your work?
Whitney Bostick: I switched to doing public service and working for the government because I wanted to serve the communities that I live in, and it’s been an honor to be selected for this position.
Juneau has been great the two months that I’ve been here and in last December. I couldn’t have asked for anything better. Everyone’s very friendly, and I just want them to know that I’m endeavoring every day, to represent the City of Juneau and the state of Alaska to the best of my ability, and make sure our victims are heard.
Yvonne Krumrey: As the Juneau District Attorney, how do you plan to kind of tackle or push back on pretrial delays?
Whitney Bostick: What we’re working on doing is, you know, we’re prioritizing the cases that defendants are in custody and that they’re older or they’re high level cases and and making sure that we’re prioritizing those cases for trial and reviewing the cases to make sure they’re cases that we should be trying as well.
We don’t want witnesses or victims to not be available for trial, so we’re having to prioritize and push for these cases to be tried. We’re, you know, we’re not shying away from doing trials, and we’re making sure that the cases that we’re pushing to trial are cases that are ready to go.
Yvonne Krumrey: Thank you for taking the time to talk to me.
Whitney Bostick: Thank you.
