Rich Curtner

Rich Curtner is a criminal defense lawyer in Alaska. He is the Federal Public Defender for the District of Alaska.

F. Richard Curtner has been a public defender for over 40 years. Mr. Curtner received his undergraduate degree from Ohio State University in 1970. After serving in the U.S. Army from 1970 to 1972, he enrolled in the Capital University Law School in Columbus, Ohio, where he received his Juris Doctor degree in 1976.

Curtner started in the Franklin County Public Defender Office in Columbus, Ohio, while in law school. After ten years, he was an office supervisor and felony trial attorney, handling a number of death penalty cases through trial and appeals. In 1985, he joined the faculty at Ohio State College of Law as supervising attorney in the law school clinical programs. Rich Curtner moved to Alaska in 1987. He spent the first five years in Alaska at the Public Defender Agency in Palmer. He first joined the Federal Defender Office in 1992 as an Assistant Federal Defender. Curtner returned briefly to private practice, and then he served a short term back at the State Public Defender Office as Training Director.

In 1996, Curtner was appointed by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals as the Federal Defender for Alaska. The Office of the Federal Public Defender was created by Congress to fulfill the constitutional requirement that indigents charged with crimes in the federal justice system be provided with professional legal representation at no cost. Congress funds the Offices of the Federal Public Defender through the Defender Services Division of the Administrative Office of the United States Courts. Curtner was reappointed to additional four-year terms commencing in 2000, 2004, 2008, 2012, and 2016. As Federal Defender, Rich Curtner oversees five Assistant Federal Defenders in the Anchorage home office, plus support staff. The office is responsible for providing indigent defense services in federal court for all of Alaska.

Curtner has represented numerous high-profile clients including Joshua Wade, who in 2010 admitted to killing his neighbor, Mindy Schloss in 2007, as well as Della Brown in 2000, a crime for which Wade had been found not guilty at a state court trial. Curtner also represented confessed serial killer Israel Keyes, who committed suicide while in custody awaiting trial for the kidnapping and murder of an Anchorage barista, 18-year-old Samantha Koenig.

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