Duane Samuels was shot to death Oct. 5, 1989. Today, the man convicted of killing him wants to be resentenced.
Today, the man convicted of killing him wants to be resentenced.29-year-old Duane Samuels , who had been shot three times while inside his home. Duane’s father found his body inside a closet in Duane’s home.
“My dad sits down on the couch and all he can say over and over again is, ‘How am I going to tell your mother? How am I going to tell your mom? ’” Ralph Samuels, Duane’s brother, has previously told Alaska’s News Source. Norton confessed and was sentenced as an adult to 99 years in prison, but that could change.
What’s in question now is how many teenagers in Alaska, sentenced as adults, could be resentenced after a 2023 Alaska Court of Appeals ruling found juvenile sentences must consider age, vulnerability, and prospects for rehabilitation, and how juveniles are fundamentally different from adults.was released from prison following her conviction for a triple murder at age 14. Her resentencing was based on the new judgment and meant she had already served enough time to be released.
“Out of the 37 years since Jon Norton blew Duane Samuels’ head off as Duane crawled across the bedroom floor of his own house, the Samuels family has been involved in active litigation to release Norton for 31 of those years. It is a never ending nightmare where we relive it over and over again,” Ralph Samuels, Duane’s young brother, wrote on Facebook.
“If this pisses you off as much as it does us, and you have a couple of minutes to spare, I invite you to join my family at the Nesbett Courthouse in the courtroom. “Come on by for every Alaskan that’s been victimized, every Alaskan that’s been raped, or just every Alaskan that doesn’t feel safe any more in the city I was born in. ” They did.
People supporting the Samuels family filled the seats and lined the walls during the resentencing hearing Friday.
“There’s no justice at all. It never ends,” Ralph Samuels said, “and it’s not going to end Tuesday and it’s not going to end in July whenever this ruling comes out. ”“It’s my opinion that he has been rehabilitated,” Kavanaugh testified. Kavanaugh testified Friday that she spent 13 hours interviewing Norton.
She told the court she found that Norton was forthright, that he was not “irreparably corrupt” and that he was remorseful about the shooting and rehabilitated, and that when he killed Samuels, he had acted on an impulse consistent with a young person whose brain had not fully developed.
“I think that he has matured greatly. I remember at one point thinking, ‘Oh, this isn’t the young person who was acting out and so many years earlier on in their incarceration,’” Kavanaugh testified.
“He was very mature, reflective and thoughtful. At some point I also thought, ‘Oh, he’s had therapy. He’s gained insight into sort of what has motivated him into the decisions that he made. He came up as being very mature, honest and thoughtful.
”, have said that after Norton killed Samuels, he returned to the home several times to get a 7-Up, beer, and to show Samuels’ dead body to a friend.
“The court system is partially to blame for this never ending, dragging the victims through the mud, which I consider today was just another example of that,” Samuels told Alaska’s News Source outside the courtroom. A retired Anchorage Police Homicide supervisor also testified that Norton shot Duane to steal his car, used a stolen handgun to shoot Samuels, and that he saw “no remorse” after being arrested.
In Alaska, almost 70 teenagers have been convicted of crimes and sentenced as adults, according to the Department of Corrections. The ACLU of Alaska says that most likely fewer than 20 people qualify for resentencing based on many factors, including where their cases stand in the court system.
According to the Department of Corrections’ information from 2025, the former and current teenagers in prison who were sentenced as adults were convicted on a range of charges, from murder to sexual abuse of a minor, assaulting a police officer, to carrying deadly weapons. The youngest person in custody today is 16, while the oldest is 60. The person who’s served the least amount of time so far is 2.1 years and the longest is 41.
Online news articles show that Norton has been a leader, training dogs in the Special Pet Obedience and Training program in prison where rescue dogs are taken care of by inmates who pay for the animal’s food and medical care themselves. Samuels has said his brother’s death forever altered his family, which included his father being unable to drive in certain parts of town and being unable to open his own closet.
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