Don\u2019t tell basketball jokes to Susan Carney. She\u2019s heard them all.<\/p>\n
This afternoon, the former junior-varsity Harvard basketball player will become the newest member of the Alaska Supreme Court.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe basketball thing has kind of taken on a life of its own,\u201d she said Thursday by phone from Fairbanks, good humor in her voice.<\/p>\n
Carney left Harvard in 1987, but in the 29 years since, she\u2019s kept her skill on both the hardwood and in the courtroom.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s … quite a baller,\u201d Marna Sanford of the Tanana Chiefs Conference told the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner in a May interview. Sanford worked with Carney for five years in the Office of Public Advocacy and played on her women\u2019s league basketball team.<\/p>\n
Now, she\u2019s joining a team of five people on the Supreme Court bench. She replaces Dana Fabe, the longtime justice who hired Carney when she first came to Alaska.<\/p>\n
That was in 1988, when Carney was two years removed from Harvard Law School, which she attended alongside Michelle Obama (then Robinson). She left campus one year before Barack Obama arrived.<\/p>\n
Fresh from school, she was hired as a law clerk for Alaska Supreme Court Justice Jay Rabinowitz.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wasn\u2019t entirely sure what I was going to do when I graduated from law school,\u201d she said. \u201cI figured that well, I\u2019ll do that and see Alaska for a year.\u201d<\/p>\n
Instead, after her year of clerking, she took a job with Fabe, who at the time was the head of the Alaska Public Defender Agency\u2019s office in Anchorage. She stayed there for only a few months before transferring to the agency\u2019s office in Fairbanks.<\/p>\n
It was a fortunate transfer \u2014 she liked it enough that she\u2019s lived in Fairbanks since 1988. She met her husband, Pete Graveman, there. She had a son (Sam) and daughter (Rebecca) there.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s my home,\u201d she told Mark Thiessen of the Associated Press in May.<\/p>\n
She said by phone on Wednesday that she intends to keep living there and commute to Anchorage as necessary \u2014 even though \u201cnecessary\u201d has come a little more often than she first thought.<\/p>\n
Through her career, Carney has stayed a staunch defender of the accused. A Harvard Law degree can be a ticket to a high-paying corporate legal career, but Carney stayed with state service, aiding poor Alaskans who couldn\u2019t afford to hire an attorney.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think any public defender job is easy, but I found it fascinating,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The job required her to travel to \u201ceverything from Fairbanks north and west. That was something new and exciting to me,\u201d she said. \u201cI loved seeing how different communities were and how differently people lived.\u201d<\/p>\n
When he selected Carney for the supreme court, Gov. Bill Walker said he was impressed by Carney\u2019s experience in rural Alaska and her willingness to stay in Alaska despite opportunities elsewhere.<\/p>\n
Carney has participated in more than 150 trials \u2014 by her own accounting \u2014 an extraordinary figure for most attorneys.<\/p>\n
She enjoyed seeing the happiness of a successful adoption and the sense of victory that came when someone was found not guilty.<\/p>\n
One of her biggest triumphs came in 2006 when a jury acquitted three Fort Wainwright soldiers of murder. The jury found they acted in self-defense when confronted by a rapper nicknamed \u201cSnoop.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was a very important case,\u201d Carney said. \u201cThese guys were supposed to deploy (to Iraq) the next day, and instead they went to jail.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now, Carney finds herself in a job that\u2019s \u201cmuch more academic\u201d than her last one. Instead of working through cases, one after another, being a supreme court justice requires deep dives into each topic. \u201cWe address them in far greater depth than any public defender or public advocate can do,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
When she formally is installed into office today, she said she\u2019ll be thinking about the honor of the moment.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s the supreme court of this whole state, and a few months ago, I was basically just a public defender, a public advocate. Now, I\u2019ve moved to becoming one of just five justices overseeing the whole court, the whole court system,\u201d she said. \u201cAt the same time I feel honored, I feel a little sort of amazed at the sort of responsibility that goes with it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2022 Contact reporter James Brooks at 523-2258 or james.k.brooks@juneauempire.com.<\/p>\n
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