The suspect in a December 2015 confrontation that ended with a man dead and his son seriously injured has pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of criminally negligent homicide.<\/p>\n
Kevin Scott Nauska, 20, took a plea agreement in Juneau Superior Court Friday that could net him just two years in prison \u2014 a five-year deal with three years suspended.<\/p>\n
A judge will decide whether to accept the agreement at a sentencing hearing scheduled for March 13. Criminally negligent homicide is a Class B felony with a potential maximum 10-year sentence.<\/p>\n
The proposed plea deal also calls for Nauska to be placed on probation for an undetermined length of time after he is released from prison.<\/p>\n
Nauska was initially charged with manslaughter after reportedly killing 37-year-old Jordon Sharclane and injuring his son, Michael Sharclane, 19, on Dec. 6, 2015.<\/p>\n
After Friday\u2019s hearing, members of the Sharclane family huddled in prayer around Michael, who was in attendance in court for the first time.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy heart is broken,\u201d said Myrna Brown, Jordon\u2019s mother and Michael\u2019s grandmother. \u201cThere will be no justice.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can\u2019t bring (Jordon) back, certainly,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy life is forever changed,\u201d said an emotional Robert Sharclane, who was with Jordon and Michael that night. \u201cI was very, very close to my brother \u2014 he always took care of me. \u2026 I\u2019m having a really tough time.\u201d<\/p>\n
During the hearing in Superior Court, Juneau District Attorney James Scott took the time to put the case and the proposed plea deal in context, calling it a \u201cjust\u201d outcome.<\/p>\n
To call the stabbings a \u201csenseless tragedy\u201d was almost a clich\u00e9, Scott said, \u201cbut it\u2019s certainly true in this case.\u201d<\/p>\n
Scott laid out the events of that night, which began with a group of young men drinking at the beach, he said.<\/p>\n
Scott said Nauska grabbed Michael\u2019s hoodie and bolted, in what Scott called \u201cthe kind of horseplay\u201d that young men engage in.<\/p>\n
Michael erroneously believed his cellphone and iPod were in the hoodie, and recruited his father and two uncles to help retrieve his property, Scott said.<\/p>\n
Scott then described an altercation between Michael and Nauska, with Michael forcing his way into the condo and demanding the return of his belongings. Nauska forced him out the door, but Michael came back in before Nauska grabbed a kitchen knife and stabbed him.<\/p>\n
Michael retreated back out of the condo and down the stairs with Nauska following him. That\u2019s when Jordon \u201centered the fray\u201d and was stabbed once by Nauska, Scott said.<\/p>\n
Nauska then threw his knife into the woods, but claimed he was not trying to ditch it and led the police to where he had tossed it, Scott said.<\/p>\n
According to Scott, during Nauska\u2019s indictment hearing, the grand jury engaged in a \u201cgranular-level\u201d analysis of the law surrounding self-defense.<\/p>\n
After Nauska managed to get Michael out of the condo, he could have closed the door and locked it. Instead, said Scott, he followed him out into a common area, where he engaged in a further confrontation that ended in the fatal stabbing of Jordon.<\/p>\n
That decision moves a claim of self-defense out of the realm of being reasonable, which is why the grand jury indicted Nauska on a charge of manslaughter rather than murder, Scott said.<\/p>\n
And that\u2019s why a plea of criminally negligent homicide was a reasonable outcome, Scott said, acknowledging that the Sharclane family probably disagrees.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know you\u2019ve suffered a tremendous loss,\u201d Judge Philip Pallenberg told the Sharclane family, who will be able to speak to the court at Nauska\u2019s March 13 sentencing.<\/p>\n
After Friday\u2019s hearing, Robert Sharclane disputed the version of events presented by Scott in the courtroom.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m just very confused,\u201d he said. \u201cWe weren\u2019t able to tell (the judge) what really happened. … That\u2019s not the way it went down.\u201d<\/p>\n
For one, Robert said, he was the person who told the police that Nauska ran around the corner to throw his knife away.<\/p>\n
And, according to Robert, Nauska stabbed Jordon twice rather than just once, after he ran to protect Michael.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf my brother didn\u2019t step in his way, my nephew would have been done,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The suspect in a December 2015 confrontation that ended with a man dead and his son seriously injured has pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of criminally negligent homicide. Kevin Scott Nauska, 20, took a plea agreement in Juneau Superior Court Friday that could net him just two years in prison \u2014 a five-year deal […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":2502,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[75],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-2501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2501"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2501\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2501"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=2501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}