A Fairbanks judge has scheduled the trial of a woman accused of stabbing three people in November 2017 to begin in April 2026.
Lindsey Lee Daly, formerly Preshaw, faces felony murder charges for allegedly stabbing 57-year-old Jeanette Elaine Miller at the Alaska Motor Inn on Nov. 27, 2017, and for allegedly stabbing John Thomas Preshaw III — Daly’s stepbrother, fiancé and father of her children — to death on Nov. 28, 2017, in an apartment above a restaurant located across the parking lot from the Alaska Motel.
Daly was previously sentenced to 43 years in prison in September 2020 for stabbing a 67-year-old Ester woman 10 times on Nov. 29, 2017.
Daly has been representing herself in court since the beginning of March.
At a hearing on Friday, Daly asked the judge to delay her trial by 33 months to give her time to review discovery materials and prepare.
“There’s no way I can do this year,” she said.
“I can’t give you enough time to get a law degree. That’s not going to happen,” Senior Judge Mark Wood told Daly.
Wood agreed that “There’s a lot of discovery in this case.”
Assistant District Attorney Kathryn Mason said the state anticipates both trials will take two to three weeks. The state plans to prosecute Daly first for the alleged murder of John Preshaw, followed by a separate trial for the death of Jeanette Miller.
Daly objected to the scheduling, saying the trials would be “out of order again.”
Judge Wood scheduled the first trial to begin on April 13, 2026, at the Fairbanks Courthouse.
“Thirty-three months is patently unreasonable,” Wood said. “I think one year is reasonable for her to go to trial.”
Michael Shaffer, a victims’ rights attorney, said he “vigorously objects” to granting Daly a full year to prepare for trial. He noted the cases have been pending for seven and a half years and that Daly is already familiar with the facts.
“She has chosen to represent herself, that does not allow her to egregiously prolong ... “ Shaffer said. “The court does not need to give her endless accommodations.”
Jeanette Miller’s husband, Archie Miller, told the News-Miner on Friday that he had been with Jeanette for 18 years before her death.
“She [Jeanette] was nonviolent and real sweet little gal,” he said. “My regret is I never bought her a pistol and never saw it coming.”
Archie Miller said burying his wife at Birch Hill Cemetery was “the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my entire life.”
“You don’t get to say goodbye,” he said. “I wouldn’t wish it on anybody.”
He said he does not plan to attend Daly’s trial in 2026.
“They can’t put me in the same room with her after what she did to me,” he said.
“I hope the judges up there got common sense when it comes to her.”
Miller warned that Daly poses a threat to public safety.
“She should never see the light of day outside of a cell,” he said. “I don’t understand to this day why she had to go killing people.”
He also advocated for the reinstatement of the death penalty in Alaska as a deterrent to violent crime.
- Miller said judges are ”lenient” on criminals and that capital punishment would “put fear in the criminals.”
“Life in jail is not a deterrent for murder,” he said. “I think we need harder punishment for crime.”
- ”People who kill don’t ever stop killing and sometimes it takes evil acts to stop evil,”he added. ”[The death penalty] puts fear into criminals if they know that’ll be the end of them.”
Contact Haley Lehman at 907-459-7575 or by email at hlehman@newsminer.com.
