\n<\/p>\n
A rush of cold air fills the kitchen on a spring day in the Alaska Native village of Kipnuk as a man dusted in frost steps through the door.<\/p>\n
Justine Paul, age 34, silently mixes himself a glass of lemonade, drops into a chair and exhales into his lap. Soon, he retreats to his childhood bedroom, where he stares out the window studying how fast the clouds move \u2014 the way he\u2019s always sensed a storm before it breaks. A metal baseball bat leans against the doorframe.\u00a0<\/p>\n
When the Bering Sea wind bullies the house, Paul wonders if police listen through cracks in the walls. Waking beneath the Michael Jordan posters in his room, he sometimes fears he\u2019s dreaming. That his body might still be 100 miles away, across the tundra in a 7.5-by-9-foot jail cell.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Today<\/strong>: A man spends seven years in jail as the flawed evidence against him falls apart.<\/p>\n Next<\/strong>: The unfinished search for justice in the murder of Eunice Whitman.<\/p>\n Paul spent seven years in jail waiting to be tried on a murder charge built on bad evidence. The central clues that prosecutors relied on to connect him to the murder crumbled as soon as anyone checked. But it took dozens of delays, agreed to by a revolving cast of lawyers, before the state finally dropped the case in 2022, releasing Paul. Apart from one month on pretrial release, he\u2019d been behind bars for 2,600 days.\u00a0<\/p>\n In a state court system that allows delay after delay before the accused goes on trial, Paul\u2019s case is a reminder of why speedy trial rights exist in the first place: to prevent defendants from paying the price when police or prosecutors make mistakes. It is one of the most damning examples of Alaska\u2019s slow-motion justice system, which takes more than twice as long to resolve the most serious felonies as it did a decade ago.\u00a0<\/p>\n The workings of Alaska\u2019s justice system have an outsize impact on Alaska Natives like Paul, who are 18% of the state\u2019s residents but 40% of people arrested. In recent years, they have edged out white Alaskans as the largest group held in state jails and prisons.\u00a0<\/p>\n Time lost while Paul was locked up and in the years since have left the murder victim\u2019s family waiting for someone to face a jury so the truth can be known.<\/p>\n Joann Paul Carl gives her son Justine Paul a cup of soup in their Kipnuk, Alaska, home. Joann said Justine was suspicious and hypervigilant of his surroundings when he returned to Kipnuk after being released from jail. \u201cHe felt cursed,\u201d she said.<\/span> Marc Lester\/Anchorage Daily News<\/span><\/p>\n State police only this year reopened the investigation into who fatally stabbed Eunice Whitman, Paul\u2019s girlfriend. Her sister Heather Whitman said she was surprised when a reporter told her that troopers are actively working the case once again.\u00a0<\/p>\n Whitman was unaware of the reasons cited for dismissing Paul\u2019s case and said she still assumes he is guilty. The absence of consequences for anyone in her sister\u2019s death has left the family bitter.<\/p>\n An attorney who helped to ultimately get Paul\u2019s charges dropped said the case is the first that comes to mind when people ask how lawyers can represent those accused of violent crimes. Beyond the fact that everybody deserves a good defense, some defendants may be truly innocent.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThose are the ones that are super stressful,\u201d said defense attorney Windy Hannaman. \u201cTo think that if you mess up, this guy that you think is innocent could go to jail for a really long time.\u201d<\/p>\n And then there is the crime itself: the 2015 stabbing of a joyous 23-year-old Alaska Native woman in a public place, left unsolved after the state swiftly indicted Paul on easily disproven evidence. Someone is getting away with her murder, and the chance to hold them accountable slips further away year after wasted year.\u00a0<\/p>\n A 45-minute flight by Cessna from Paul\u2019s hometown, the city of Bethel hugs a curve of the lower Kuskokwim River. Unreachable from most of Alaska by car, it is home to about 6,000 people, most of them Yup\u2019ik. Tundra stretches to the horizon in all directions. At the town\u2019s center, between a convenience store and a baseball diamond known as Pinky\u2019s Park, tilted wooden boardwalks lace a few acres of wetland.<\/p>\n Bethel Police investigator Amy Davis slowly walked these trails on May 24, 2015, aiming her flashlight into the 5 a.m. gloom. What she knew so far: Four boys looking for a place to smoke pot had found a woman\u2019s body here in a sunken patch of ground known as \u201cthe pit.\u201d Davis arrived an hour after they called the police.<\/p>\n Ponytailed and in her mid-30s, Davis made note of sodden cigarette butts among the low cottonwood bushes and the shoe prints stamped in mud and grass. She came upon the body a few yards away.<\/p>\n Although wearing the dark blue patrol uniform of her colleagues, Davis was the Bethel Police Department\u2019s sole detective. After five years in a region with the highest murder rate in Alaska, in a state where more women are murdered by men per capita than anywhere else in the United States, Davis had never seen a killing like this.\u00a0<\/p>\n A dark pool of blood soaked the grass, suggesting the victim had been stabbed in one location, where most of the blood loss occurred, and dragged 10 feet away. The victim\u2019s clothes, also bloody, lay stacked in a neat pile. The killer lingered here after the act, risking discovery.\u00a0<\/p>\n A medical examiner later concluded the woman had been stabbed 31 times, in the stomach, the groin and the neck. A former Bethel prosecutor who became Paul\u2019s defense attorney, Marcy McDannel, said the killing is among the most horrific she\u2019s encountered in almost 30 years of practicing law in Alaska.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cYou only see this type of scene in a serial killer type of case, and these are \u2014 despite what true crime media would have you believe \u2014 exceedingly rare,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Heather Whitman and Eunice, her 8-year-old daughter, stand at the end of a Bethel boardwalk near where Heather\u2019s sister Eunice Whitman was found murdered in 2015. Heather named her daughter after her sister. She said law enforcement hasn\u2019t talked to her family about the case in years. <\/span> Marc Lester\/Anchorage Daily News<\/span><\/p>\n After several hours, Davis had no murder weapon, no name for the victim and no leads. That changed when a police dispatcher took a call from a young man who said he\u2019d been frantically searching for his girlfriend.<\/p>\n It was Paul. He\u2019d heard a body had been found by Pinky\u2019s Park. Was it Eunice Whitman?<\/p>\n Davis met with Paul at the police station. In a police video of the interview, the investigator didn\u2019t talk about who died but instead asked a series of questions about his relationship with Whitman, the place and time he last saw her and his movements afterward. After two or three hours he told police he was tired and wanted to go home. Davis let him sleep in a holding cell.<\/p>\n In the meantime, the detective obtained a search warrant for the home of a relative with whom Paul was staying in Bethel. Davis wrote that police noticed cuts on Paul\u2019s cheek and hand \u2014 evidence photos show a laceration on his finger the size of a paper cut \u2014 and what she said appeared to be a drop of blood on his shoe. She added that a witness had called the station saying he\u2019d seen a man and woman arguing on the boardwalk hours before the killing.<\/p>\n Seven hours into Paul\u2019s time at the station, officers had something. Inside the house where he was staying was a small black backpack filled with items including a pair of Old Navy jeans and a tie-dyed T-shirt.\u00a0<\/p>\n They had blood on them.<\/p>\n Davis returned to the interview room armed with this new information. An investigator with the Alaska State Troopers, Austin MacDonald, entered with her. Now, finally, MacDonald informed Paul that Whitman, the woman Paul said he intended to marry, was dead. Paul put his head down in his arms and kept it there.\u00a0 After a short time, he let out a wail.<\/p>\n Obtained by Anchorage Daily News and ProPublica<\/span><\/p>\n Coolly asking Paul to collect himself, MacDonald leaned in. The questions sharpened. Did Paul know where Whitman died? How she died? Paul said he\u2019d heard that the body was found at the pit by Pinky\u2019s Park. He said that police told him she was stabbed in the throat.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cSo what, do you guys think I\u2019ve done it?\u201d he asked.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cNo, we don\u2019t think that you did it, Justine, OK?\u201d said the trooper. \u201cWe already know<\/em> that you did it.\u201d<\/p>\n MacDonald, like other troopers in the case, did not respond when asked to comment on a detailed description of their actions.<\/p>\n Paul told them they had it wrong. He loved his girlfriend and wouldn\u2019t do what was done to her.\u00a0<\/p>\n He asked for a lawyer and placed his forehead on the table, saying he was done talking. MacDonald told him investigators would stop asking about what happened. The trooper instead prepared to serve a new search warrant, this time on Paul himself.<\/p>\n After a brief silence, MacDonald added, \u201cOh, and just so you know, I want you to know that we found your bloody clothes.\u201d<\/p>\n Paul lifted his forehead just slightly off the table. \u201cWhat bloody clothes?\u201d he said. \u201cWhat are you talking about?\u201d<\/p>\n Paul and Eunice Whitman had been together for five months when she died.\u00a0<\/p>\n Whitman was 23. Yup\u2019ik like Paul, she had full cheeks, long lashes like her sisters and daughters, and long dark hair and bangs. Paul was 24, a thin, clean-shaven man with tattoos, glasses and a habit of joking to fill silences.\u00a0<\/p>\n Life in the town of Bethel, where Whitman grew up, and the neighboring village of Kipnuk, where Paul did, revolves around moose hunts and the yearly arrival of salmon in wide, green rivers. The couple had known each other since they were kids, when Whitman visited Kipnuk to compete in the Native Youth Olympics, but only started dating in January 2015.\u00a0<\/p>\n As their relationship grew more serious and talk turned to marriage, Whitman returned to the village to meet Paul\u2019s mother, Joann Paul Carl. Whitman brought a jar of decaf coffee that she used in a broth for musk ox stew, a recipe Joann had never tried. Justine Paul \u2014 everyone pronounces it \u201cJustin\u201d \u2014 seemed happy, which his mother says she didn\u2019t take for granted.<\/p>\n Joann Carl cries when describing fallout from the murder case against her son. \u201cHe was not my son,\u201d Joann said of Justine after his release. \u201cHe was a totally different person.\u201d<\/span> Marc Lester\/Anchorage Daily News<\/span><\/p>\n One reason Davis said she focused on Paul as a suspect in Whitman\u2019s murder was his criminal record. At age 16, he was charged with attempted sexual assault involving a 9-year-old boy. Paul pleaded guilty, court records show, making him a registered sex offender while still a minor.\u00a0<\/p>\n People talked openly about Paul\u2019s record in Whitman\u2019s presence, according to interviews conducted by police. But Whitman, who fled a violent relationship with her prior boyfriend, according to restraining orders she filed in Bethel court, told friends Paul would never hurt her.\u00a0<\/p>\n On the night of the murder, a video on Paul\u2019s phone timestamped 12:11 a.m. showed Whitman on the boardwalk arguing with the person behind the camera, a report by state troopers says. Paul told police the couple went in different directions at 1 or 2 a.m. A dispatcher took the call about a body at 4 that morning.<\/p>\n Paul spent the time in between wandering around and looking for Whitman, he told the Anchorage Daily News and ProPublica. His text messages showed him arranging to meetup with friends and looking for a place to sleep, troopers wrote. He went to bed at 7 a.m. at his aunt\u2019s house and awakened later in the day to learn Whitman\u2019s family had been trying to find her, he said.<\/p>\n As Paul sat in a jail cell during the days after Whitman\u2019s death, prosecutors got to work preparing to appear before a grand jury. They heard from a friend of Whitman\u2019s that she\u2019d had a recent miscarriage. The friend told police Paul blamed it on Whitman\u2019s drinking. The state\u2019s narrative: Paul killed Whitman out of anger over losing the baby.\u00a0<\/p>\n A transcript of the grand jury proceeding shows prosecutor Mike Gray delivering a grisly account. The crime had been especially bloody because, according to the medical examiner, the killer had cut arteries in Whitman\u2019s groin and neck. Clothing later found in a backpack belonging to the victim\u2019s boyfriend, meanwhile, was stained with blood.\u00a0<\/p>\n Gray told jurors that under questioning by police, Paul had revealed \u201cdamning\u201d knowledge of Whitman\u2019s neck wound. The prosecutor also said a shoe print near her body was at least consistent with the tread on Paul\u2019s sneakers.\u00a0<\/p>\n But Gray said that a pending DNA test on Paul\u2019s bloody clothing \u2014 needed to verify whether the blood was the victim\u2019s \u2014 would be \u201cthe real determinant of this case.\u201d<\/p>\n The grand jury quickly handed up an indictment. Paul was to stand trial for first-degree murder, with a maximum sentence of 99 years in prison.<\/p>\n There was just one problem. The blood, the state\u2019s crime lab found, was not what it seemed.\u00a0<\/p>\n Technicians examined a stain from Paul\u2019s Old Navy jeans and concluded it contained blood from a man, rather than from Whitman as the prosecution had suggested. More specifically, the lab said it was consistent with Paul\u2019s DNA.<\/p>\n A day or two before Whitman died \u2014 accounts differ on the timing \u2014 Paul had fought a man in front of several witnesses. Paul told the newsrooms that the fight left him with a bloody nose and that he stuffed his stained T-shirt and jeans into his backpack afterward.\u00a0<\/p>\n When Paul\u2019s bloody jeans failed to match the victim\u2019s DNA, Davis asked the lab to test more of Paul\u2019s bloody clothing. Emails show that crime lab officials resisted, saying the lab couldn\u2019t test every item in every case it worked on. But Davis kept at it.\u00a0<\/p>\n Months later, the lab examined Paul\u2019s Southpole-brand tie-dyed T-shirt and again found no evidence of Whitman\u2019s blood. The stains had so much male DNA that the lab concluded no female DNA was likely to show up with a closer look.\u00a0<\/p>\n Davis, in two recent interviews and by email, said she continues to believe Paul committed the murder. She cited circumstantial evidence and said the DNA testing didn\u2019t go far enough.\u00a0<\/p>\n Among the other clothing in Paul\u2019s backpack were a tank top and boxers, which weren\u2019t on the list of items lab records say were tested, even though police described them as bloodstained. Another two items are listed as having \u201ctransfer\u201d stains, meaning they seemed to have absorbed blood from other clothing. Davis said her boss told her hiring a private lab to test more items would cost the city too much.<\/p>\n \u201cIf we are being honest, the lab thing was a major failure in my eyes,\u201d Davis said.\u00a0<\/p>\n (The Department of Public Safety, which runs the crime lab, said in a statement that technicians \u201cleft no viable forensic stone unturned\u201d in the Whitman case.)<\/p>\n Records show the state lab ruled out the blood being Whitman\u2019s on May 9, 2016, a little less than a year after Paul\u2019s arrest. The state\u2019s hoped-for evidence, the central pillar of the prosecution\u2019s case \u2014 that Paul stabbed Whitman, who then bled profusely on his clothes \u2014 had just fallen apart.\u00a0<\/p>\n Yet it would take another six years for Paul to go free.<\/p>\n Paul said in April that he struggles with the effect of his girlfriend\u2019s murder and the time he spent locked up. \u201cIt\u2019s going to be a battle that\u2019s going on in my head,\u201d he said.<\/span> Marc Lester\/Anchorage Daily News<\/span><\/p>\n Alaska\u2019s justice system is supposed to move far more rapidly. The state constitution says crime victims have a right to the \u201ctimely disposition\u201d of a case. Further, Alaska interprets the defendant\u2019s right to \u201cspeedy and public trial\u201d under the U.S. Constitution to mean people should face a judge or jury within 120 days of being charged.\u00a0<\/p>\n But the time to resolve the most serious Alaska felonies as of 2025 was more than three years, and some recently resolved cases took 10. Victims have long described the pain that the wait for justice can inflict. ProPublica and the Anchorage Daily News this year found two sexual assault cases that took so many years to resolve, the victims died. Another case had been delayed more than 70 times.\u00a0<\/p>\n For defendants, the slow walk to a courtroom carries a different price. Research shows long pretrial delays upend families, increase trauma and make guilty pleas more likely even for people who maintain their innocence \u2014 because they want an end to the uncertainty.\u00a0<\/p>\n Prosecutors, defense attorneys and judges are all implicated in the torpor of Alaska\u2019s courtrooms.\u00a0<\/p>\n Critics have described a culture of delay: a week here, two months there. An attorney might be newly assigned, backlogged with other cases or down with the flu. One side says, \u201cWe need more time,\u201d the other agrees, and the judge suspends the 120-day speedy trial countdown.<\/p>\n Soon the list of postponements, each one seemingly reasonable, has grown to dozens.\u00a0<\/p>\n These delays became an open secret among Alaska court observers. The state Office of Victims\u2019 Rights has warned of excessive pretrial delays every year since 2014. The pandemic only made the problem worse. While most states halted trials for eight to 12 months, Alaska\u2019s pause lasted two years.\u00a0<\/p>\n Court officials have ordered new limits on delays to address the problem, and court data shows the time it takes to resolve misdemeanors and low-level felonies has dropped. But case durations remain stubbornly long for high-level felonies.<\/p>\n In Paul\u2019s case, the initial court-appointed attorney had expressed impatience during the year after Paul\u2019s arrest as prosecutors kept requesting delays to test his bloody clothes.\u00a0<\/p>\n William Montgomery, a former college baseball player who moved to Alaska after law school, was in his second year on the job with the Office of Public Advocacy when he took Paul\u2019s case. He had agreed to the postponements. In May 2016, apparently exasperated, he told Judge Nathaniel Peters that prosecutors couldn\u2019t \u201cjust continue this out endlessly.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Eventually everyone got the latest lab results, which again showed that the main evidence used to charge Paul came up short.<\/p>\n The state ought to have ended the case right then, two Alaska defense attorneys unconnected to the case told the newsrooms. Prosecutors presented other police findings to the grand jury, but they had so firmly emphasized the bloody clothing that they should have dropped the indictment when this evidence collapsed. Or they could have asked grand jurors if they\u2019d re-charge Paul without it.<\/p>\n After 10 years, the state has still not brought anyone to trial in the murder of Eunice Whitman.<\/span> Marc Lester\/Anchorage Daily News<\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s unclear why the lead prosecutor, Gray, stood fast. He retired in 2017 and died in a motorcycle accident days later. Other prosecutors directly involved in the case and their supervisors in the state Department of Law did not respond to detailed questions.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Law Department provided a statement saying that because Whitman\u2019s homicide remains an open investigation, the department would not \u201cspeculate, confirm, or deny investigative theories, suspects, or evidentiary assessments beyond what is available in the public record.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n And so the case dragged on. Prosecutors proceeded with what was left of their case.\u00a0<\/p>\n A few months later, with the lawyers contemplating a November 2016 trial, Montgomery asked to examine another piece of physical evidence noted at Paul\u2019s indictment: the crime scene shoe print that police said looked similar to Paul\u2019s Nike sneakers. An expert witness for Montgomery gave him an answer in July 2017. The two prints that were clear enough for him to reliably examine didn\u2019t match Paul\u2019s, the expert wrote.<\/p>\n Montgomery now had a strong argument for the jury that both the blood and the shoe evidence were faulty.<\/p>\n But rather than move to trial, Montgomery asked for a new delay \u2014 to test more evidence. Montgomery was still working out the logistics 10 months later when he was appointed to be a state judge.<\/p>\n Montgomery declined to speak with the Daily News and ProPublica. His wife, Winter, an attorney who assisted in Paul\u2019s defense, said in an email that having experts evaluate evidence for the defense \u201ctakes time and money\u201d and can add to delays. However, she said, it is a matter of \u201cmaking the best defense possible.\u201d<\/p>\n Throughout the process, attorneys for the two sides gathered every few months for 10-minute hearings and found more reasons not to hold a trial, court minutes show. Defense and prosecution pulled out their calendars and knocked dates off the table. Another trial was in the way. Too close to moose hunting season to get jurors. When should we meet again?<\/p>\n Paul listened in from jail by phone or video before returning to his cell.<\/p>\n He voiced confusion at what was happening. He wrote the judge a note at one point asking to see the evidence against him. A clerk wrote him back, saying the judge wasn\u2019t allowed to respond. It was four years after his indictment, three since the blood evidence had been found lacking, two since Montgomery\u2019s expert had undercut the shoe evidence.<\/p>\n In 2019 \u2014 after four years of being in jail without a trial \u2014 Paul wrote the judge saying he had still never seen much of the evidence prosecutors used to accuse him of murder.<\/span> Obtained by Anchorage Daily News and ProPublica<\/span><\/p>\n He says that he passed the years reading: maybe half the jailhouse library. The Mortal Instruments young adult fantasy series became a favorite.<\/p>\n All told, Peters, the judge, granted 26 delays between Paul\u2019s arrest in 2015 and his release in August 2022. Judges who filled in for Peters granted five more delays. (Peters declined an interview request through a spokesperson, who said judges cannot discuss their decision-making beyond the court record.)<\/p>\n As a further indicator of how drawn out the proceedings became, eight state-appointed defense attorneys and 11 prosecutors came and went over the years.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s just a crazy, crazy amount of time to be pretrial, regardless of whether you\u2019re guilty or innocent,\u201d said Jacqueline Shepherd, an attorney tracking trial delays for the ACLU of Alaska, after examining key documents in Paul\u2019s case. \u201cThat uncertainty and unknown is its own form of torture for a person.\u201d<\/p>\n Paul returns to his job after a lunch break in Kipnuk this April. After he was released, he returned to Kipnuk, where he said he mostly kept to himself in his mother\u2019s home.<\/span> Marc Lester\/Anchorage Daily News<\/span><\/p>\n Paul\u2019s hometown of Kipnuk, a village of about 700, is located on the Kugkaktlik River near the Bering Sea.<\/span> Marc Lester\/Anchorage Daily News<\/span><\/p>\n New momentum in Paul\u2019s case started to build in late 2018, three years after his arrest, when he landed a new defense attorney.<\/p>\n As a prosecutor, Marcy McDannel was known as \u201cMaximum Marcy\u201d for her tenacious efforts to put defendants behind bars as long as possible. She\u2019d switched sides and now worked for the Office of Public Advocacy. When Paul\u2019s attorney was appointed as a judge, his defense team asked McDannel to take the case.<\/p>\n With her bullhorn voice and penchant for profanity, McDannel struck fear in opposing attorneys. She had worked in Bethel as a young prosecutor, walking her black Lab, Lou, on the boardwalk where Whitman\u2019s body was found. She knew the landmarks surrounding the crime scene and the players in the local police department.\u00a0<\/p>\n McDannel reviewed Paul\u2019s file, sizing up the flaws in the prosecution\u2019s case. She couldn\u2019t understand why prosecutors had stuck by the charges. She also couldn\u2019t see why her predecessors had taken so much time to bring Paul\u2019s case to trial and win.<\/p>\n The crime lab had long since found the blood on Paul\u2019s clothes was not the victim\u2019s. An expert witness had told the defense team the shoe prints from the crime scene didn\u2019t match Paul\u2019s. (The state\u2019s own analysis would later reach the same conclusion.)<\/p>\n McDannel was full of confidence. Whereas the vast majority of criminal cases end in plea deals, not jury trials, McDannel agreed with her predecessors\u2019 assessment that Paul could win a full acquittal. Unlike her predecessors, McDannel felt, she had the experience to do it quickly.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was so little evidence,\u201d McDannel said. \u201cI promised myself and Justine we would get it to trial in six months.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n She acknowledges now that goal reflected her desire rather than a realistic appraisal. A jury trial was set for Oct. 28, 2019, or 13 months after she took the case.\u00a0<\/p>\n Then, three weeks before trial, the prosecution asked for more time. McDannel had produced a last-minute expert witness. In turn, the prosecution surprised McDannel with hundreds of pages of new evidence. It didn\u2019t end up showing much, but it required review.\u00a0<\/p>\n Another round of scheduling discussions and pretrial motions began. The pandemic struck a few months later, in March 2020.<\/p>\n With courts now closed and trials on hold, McDannel used the solitude to chip away at the state\u2019s remaining circumstantial case against Paul. Although he hadn\u2019t confessed to anything, she tried to exclude his statement to police. When that failed, she found an expert in the Yup\u2019ik language to interpret Paul\u2019s demeanor during the interrogation.<\/p>\n But as the pandemic wore on, it became clear to everyone that life was not returning to normal soon. McDannel felt she\u2019d shown prosecutors they had absolutely no chance of prevailing, yet they\u2019d refused to fold. It was time to put Paul\u2019s wait to an end.\u00a0<\/p>\n The type of 7.5-by-9-foot jail cell in Bethel where Paul was held for much of his seven years in pretrial detention.<\/span> Courtesy of Alaska Department of Corrections<\/span><\/p>\n On May 12, 2022, a defense attorney named Windy Hannaman filed the motion to dismiss. Hannaman took up Paul\u2019s cause because McDannel, like so many others involved in the case, had switched jobs. But McDannel had already drafted the dismissal motion for her successor before she left. The moment seemed right. The state, too, had just put a new prosecutor on the case.<\/p>\n The 37-page defense motion argued that the evidence the lead investigator gave the grand jury, \u201calmost without exception,\u201d had fallen short in the end. \u201cNot only has the evidence failed to implicate Paul,\u201d Hannaman\u2019s filing said, \u201cmuch of it turned out to be exculpatory.\u201d<\/p>\n The document recounted how the blood work and the shoe prints failed to match when tested. It also cast doubt on the remaining claim police made to the grand jury: that Paul had incriminated himself by saying Whitman was stabbed in the neck. This seemed something that only the killer could know, and Paul had said he heard it from police.\u00a0<\/p>\n Hannaman described why she thought prosecutors would have a hard time proving Paul was lying: Police didn\u2019t have video covering all of Paul\u2019s time at the station, and it wasn\u2019t clear if officers were asked not to talk to him. (Davis told the Daily News and ProPublica that no one there other than her and the state trooper who was investigating talked to Paul about the case.)<\/p>\n In a response a month after the motion was filed, prosecutor Jenna Gruenstein said the evidence presented to the grand jurors was grounded in information available at the time and there was nothing improper about it. She also argued that physical evidence did not fully clear Paul, noting that blood on Whitman\u2019s jeans was tested and was found to be consistent with Paul\u2019s.<\/p>\n But she conceded that if the state had known about the negative blood and shoe results at the start, it would have been obliged to share that information. In its statement to the newsrooms, the Department of Law summed up Gruenstein\u2019s response as saying \u201cdismissal of the indictment was warranted, based on information developed after the initial indictment.\u201d<\/p>\n A Bethel Superior Court judge dismissed all charges on Aug. 9, 2022.\u00a0<\/p>\n Paul had spent a total of seven years and 43 days in jail.\u00a0<\/p>\n He was 24 on the day of his arrest and 31 when he was freed.\u00a0<\/p>\n The cost to Alaska taxpayers to jail him all that time only to drop the charges: an estimated $550,000.<\/p>\n On an April day in Kipnuk, a recent blizzard had deepened the spring snow. A white fog hid the ocean as the sound of basketballs clanging off a netless rim echoed down the water. Friendly village dogs, wiggling on approach, met every plane, and flat Starlink internet antennae topped houses like graduation caps.\u00a0<\/p>\n Justine Paul and his mother, Joann, were living in the family\u2019s pink house. The nearby schoolhouse is named after her late grandfather, a tribal chief. A photograph of her father playing honky-tonk guitar hangs on the wall. Joann kept a stack of his records. He was blind, and the songs have names like \u201cMy Cane, My Slippers and You.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cEvery time I feel low, I listen to him,\u201d Joann said. She thumbed through the record collection. Her son has the same Yup\u2019ik name as his musician grandfather, she said: Teggitgaq.<\/p>\n The first time Joann met Eunice Whitman, the younger woman brought a jar of decaf coffee and used it in a broth for musk ox stew, a recipe Joann had never tried. Joann says she didn\u2019t take for granted how Justine seemed happy at that time. <\/span> Marc Lester\/Anchorage Daily News<\/span><\/p>\n In Justine Paul\u2019s room, a new Facebook message arrived: \u201cKiller.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Whitman\u2019s sister, Paul explained to a reporter.<\/p>\n Until this article, the only news stories about Whitman\u2019s case available online repeated the details police used at his indictment in 2015 \u2014 the shoe prints, the bloody backpack. When prosecutors abandoned the charges against him in 2022, no one wrote about it.\u00a0<\/p>\n After getting out of jail, Paul said, he lived on the streets of Anchorage and nearly overdosed 10 times on fentanyl. He said that on two or three of these occasions, he told friends he didn\u2019t want them to revive him with the opioid antidote naloxone. He was looking to die. \u201cI kind of gave up a little bit, slowly.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n McDannel, the defense attorney, said she worried after his release.<\/p>\n \u201cI spent the first couple of months after he got out chasing him around the state because he was having psychotic breaks,\u201d McDannel said. \u201cThey took seven and a half years of his life, and I think it broke him.\u201d<\/p>\n In October, the storm that Paul once watched for out his window in Kipnuk finally rolled in.<\/p>\n Kipnuk\u2019s school \u2014 named after Joann\u2019s grandfather, the late tribal chief \u2014 surrounded by damage wrought by Typhoon Halong, which hit Alaska in October. <\/span> Marc Lester\/Anchorage Daily News<\/span><\/p>\n Winds from Typhoon Halong gusted 100 mph along the coast, driving the sea into the streets of the village. Helicopters rescued Paul and his mother. He ended up living in a village 140 miles away. She resettled in Anchorage; the pink house in Kipnuk sits empty, still full of photos.\u00a0<\/p>\n Even now Paul fears that he might be charged with Whitman\u2019s murder once more.\u00a0<\/p>\n It\u2019s unclear how real that threat might be. McDannel maintains he can\u2019t be charged again because Alaska\u2019s speedy trial clock ran out. But the state Department of Law said such decisions ultimately are made by a court and depend on the facts of each case.<\/p>\n The department also emphasized that a dismissal only reflects the prosecution\u2019s inability to prove guilt beyond reasonable doubt \u2014 \u201cnot an affirmative declaration of a defendant\u2019s factual innocence.\u201d<\/p>\n Whitman\u2019s family and Davis, the police investigator, would like to see him charged again. \u201cHe was always the prime suspect,\u201d Davis said by email.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Yet there remain other possible avenues of inquiry.<\/p>\n Police and prosecutors failed to deeply pursue other theories of the crime during the 11 days that passed between Whitman\u2019s death and Paul\u2019s indictment, investigative records show. For instance, had they widened their investigation, they might have noticed something strange.\u00a0<\/p>\n Another young woman was killed just months earlier in a neighboring community. Murdered in a nearly identical manner, stabbed multiple times and displayed nude on the tundra for all to see.<\/p>\n Eunice Whitman\u2019s grave. She would have turned 34 this December.<\/span> Marc Lester\/Anchorage Daily News<\/span><\/p>\n Next<\/strong>: The unfinished search for justice in the murder of Eunice Whitman.<\/p>\n Editor\u2019s note: We obtained court records from physical files in Bethel, Alaska, and compiled extensive audio of hearings through record requests with the state court system. Justine Paul\u2019s former attorney also provided material uncovered by police and shared with the defense, including a transcript of grand jury proceedings and video of Paul\u2019s questioning by police. Because describing every piece of information police gathered would be impractical, this story focuses mainly on evidence highlighted prominently at Paul\u2019s indictment. We used multiple channels to try to reach every person the story mentions, particularly members of Eunice Whitman\u2019s family. Heather Whitman, her sister, ultimately sat for an interview.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A rush of cold air fills the kitchen on a spring day in the Alaska Native village of Kipnuk as a man dusted in frost steps through the door. Justine Paul, age 34, silently mixes himself a glass of lemonade, drops into a chair and exhales into his lap. Soon, he retreats to his childhood<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38501,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[8447,1295,8291,533,16884,1541,247,12529,11097,637],"class_list":{"0":"post-38500","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-social-issues","8":"tag-alaska","9":"tag-bad","10":"tag-evidence","11":"tag-free","12":"tag-indicted","13":"tag-man","14":"tag-propublica","15":"tag-waited","16":"tag-walk","17":"tag-years"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38500"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38500\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/38501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}A Killing Like No Other\u00a0<\/h3>\n
A Backpack of Bloody Clothes<\/h3>\n
Six More Years\u00a0<\/h3>\n
Case Dismissed\u00a0<\/h3>\n
Life Outside\u00a0<\/h3>\n