Lady Justice/Supreme Court of the United States

What value in a human life?

The Alaska justice system has finally made Martin J. Richards pay for killing 65-year-old Redzebije Imeri.

The cost? $200.

Alaska State Court records reflect that this was the penalty imposed on the now 70-year-old, unlicensed driver whose sport-utility vehicle slammed into Imeri at the intersection of Minnesota Drive and Benson Boulevard in Anchorage’s Midtown on July 1, 2023.

Welcome to justice in one of the fattest, laziest, car-brain cities in one of the fattest, laziest, car-brain countries in the world where one of the few things the political left and the political right can agree on is that motor vehicles rule.

Against the backdrop of the raging culture war in the United States, left and right are now arguing noisily about Medicaid, government-funded health care for the poor that does a lot of good, but also pays for drugs for a lot of folks who never did much to try to take care of their health and often don’t give a damn about doing better after being told they need to change their lifestyle along with taking drugs.

The political right decided the country had been doing too much for the latter group and scaled back the program. The political left concluded the country hadn’t been doing enough to begin with and is now up in arms about what it sees as a national lack of virtue.

There are no concerns as to virtue expressed by either side when it comes to killing the most vulnerable on America’s roadways.

There is no one protesting Richards being let off with a slap on the wrist for killing Imeri.

His June 18 conviction for “driving while license canceled, suspended, revoked, or in violation of a limitation”  didn’t even warrant a mention in Anchorage’s mainstream media. And Imeri, an immigrant to Alaska from Europe’s Baltic region remains a faceless victim from a corner of the world ravaged by war as the 20th Century came to a close.

Her grief-stricken family doesn’t want to talk about how her life came to an end in the country dreamed of by so many struggling in global war zones.

The killer

Much more is known about Richards thanks to an extensive court file that goes back to the 1980s and 1990s when he was repeatedly stopped for driving without a license, driving an unsafe vehicle, running a red light, failing to yield and generally showing a disregard for the rules that are supposed to make roads safe.

By 2005, when Richards was again caught driving without a license and this time without insurance either, court records reflect that a judge was so fed up that he fined the man $6,100 and ordered him fitted with an ankle bracelet so his movements could be monitored.

Richard’s behavior appeared to improve after that encounter, and he wasn’t again caught driving without a license until 2008. A judge that year let him off with a fine of $510, and aside from being ticketed for various traffic offenses – failure to wear a seat belt, failure to signal, expired registration, unsafe lane changes and the like – Richards seemed to stay out of major trouble until 2018.

That was the year he was stopped and later convicted of drunk driving. He was ordered to go to jail, failed to show up there, became the subject of a police search, but eventually, according to court records, ended up doing his time.

He was also at that time fined $3,155 in connection with this offense, but it’s unclear from if he ever paid the fine. Online court records indicate he never paid anything, but show an outstanding balance on the fine of zero.

Those records also note that the fine was transferred to the Municipality of Anchorage for collection. What often happens when Alaska residents are involved in cases like this is that the MOA garnishes permanent fund dividends (PFDs) to settle the fine.

This happens so often that both the municipality and the state have websites explaining the processing of garnishing PFDs. The state site notes that “government agencies (state and federal), and a court may attach or garnish 100 percent of your dividend.”

With the state having paid out more than $10,000 per person in PFD dividends since 2019, those funds could easily have covered Richards’ fine for drunk driving. And the yet-to-be-distributed 2025 dividend of $1,000 would easily cover Richard’s $200 fine for killing Imeri.

According to the original report from the Anchorage Police Department, the dead woman was “near the intersection of Minnesota Drive and Benson Boulevard” when hit by the SUV driven by Richards, but was not in the crosswalk.

A witness to the collision, however, saw it differently and told this website that Richards was “over speeding, and hit the woman. And he almost hit my car, too.

“He ran over the woman. For like a second, it was sad, and I was screaming ’cause he killed her. And I left the scene ’cause (I) were scared. The old lady was not a jaywalker. The news sucks! It’s sad. He should be in jail.”

It is unclear whether APD ever talked to that witness. The agency’s public information office was notified or her existence, but as with many communications with that blackhole of an office, there was no response.

And even if she had been interviewed and given the above account to APD, it probably would have made no difference. The penalty for killing a pedestrian in a crosswalk in Anchorage is a $100 fine or half of what Richards was fined.

This is the big break given bad drivers in Alaska. It’s a $100 fine whether the pedestrian walks away with a bruise or dies.

As APD explained to the Alaska Landmine after retired dentist Carlton Higgins was mowed down in a crosswalk in 2023, these are “unfortunate event(s), but not criminally negligent.

“Twenty-five drivers have been cited (for failure to yield to pedestrians in crosswalks) since January 1, (2023). These cases all had similar fact patterns; the only difference is that nobody died.

“There is no law in Alaska that says if you commit a traffic infraction and cause injury or death, then that is per se criminal negligence. The driver in this case was treated the same as all these other cases.”

Or, in other words, if you want to kill someone in Alaska and get away with it, use your car or truck and claim it was an accident.

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