Residents of Bethel will soon be significantly more likely to be called for trial jury service. That’s after the Alaska Court System announced that it will not be pulling trial jurors from a dozen nearby villages beginning in January 2026.
Judge Brent Bennett serves as the presiding judge for the state’s fourth judicial district and issued the order. He said that the move comes down to one core concern: housing.
“Within the last year or so we’ve been noticing that we've been having more and more difficulty with making hotel accommodations for the jurors who are coming into the community,” Bennett said.
Weather delays and cancellations are the norm when flying in the region, and Bennett’s order specifically cites the risks of jurors getting stranded in Bethel without options for shelter.
“We're bringing these folks in by plane. If we don't have a place for them to stay, we're flying them back and forth,” Bennett said.
Bennett said that the court has run into situations where jurors from villages needed to be flown back and forth every day for trials lasting multiple weeks.
Typhoon Halong made the situation worse, but Bennett said that the problems existed before the storm. “At this point we are down to one hotel that we are able to use in Bethel,” he said.
That one hotel is the 39-room Long House Hotel, located around a half-mile from the courthouse. General manager Brandon West said that the hotel was booked pretty much solid with relief workers in the weeks that followed Typhoon Halong. But otherwise, he said that the hotel has worked well with the court system in recent years.
“We've always handled their jury load. The only time that we've not accepted the jury member is if they were on our do-not-rent list,” West said.
The changes to jury service are scheduled to run through June 2026, but they could be extended. West said that he welcomes the additional business that comes with bringing in outside jurors.
The dozen outside communities currently eligible for jury selection all fall within a 50-mile radius of Bethel. This is generally the range from a trial location within which the state selects jurors, but it isn’t a hard and fast rule. For instance, Bennett said that the Interior community of Fort Yukon doesn’t call trial jurors from outside the community in misdemeanor cases due to arduous travel and lack of accommodations.
That 50-mile radius has been criticized in the past for leaving out numerous communities culturally bound to the Yukon-Kuskokwim (Y-K) Delta, but generally unrepresented on Bethel juries.
The upcoming changes also increase the duration of trial jury service in Bethel from one to two months. Grand jury service, which was already limited to Bethel-based jurors, is being extended to three months.
“Based on taking these jurors from these outer communities out of the pool, the total population that we have to draw from in Bethel drops,” Bennett said.
With this smaller jury pool, Bennett said that the extensions will cut down on the frequency that the same jurors are called and increase juror diversity. To reduce the time burden for trial jurors, Bennett said that they will only be required to call into the courts weekly, instead of five times a week.
Bethel has historically been one of the most expensive courts in terms of jury service. In its FY2024 report, the Alaska Court System noted that trials held in Bethel accounted for almost half of the nearly $2 million the state spent on juror expenses that year. But a court spokesperson said that these costs have been dropping, and that the jury changes are not based on budget concerns.
Bennett said that the order to exclude non-Bethel communities could be extended beyond the end of June 2026 if additional housing options don’t open up in the community. But he said that it’s not supposed to be permanent.
Communities where jurors will no longer be called from beginning in January 2026 include Akiachak, Akiak, Atmautluak, Eek, Kasigluk, Kwethluk, Napakiak, Napaskiak, Nunapitchuk, Oscarville, Tuluksak, and Tuntutuliak.
