Opinion
Court of Appeals No. A-9043.
March 1, 2006.
Appeal from the Superior Court, First Judicial District, Juneau, Larry R. Weeks, Judge, Trial Court No. 1JU-04-132 Cr.
David M. Seid, Assistant Public Defender, Ketchikan, and Barbara Brink, Public Defender, Anchorage, for the Appellant.
Doug Gardner, Assistant District Attorney, Patrick J. Gullufsen, District Attorney, and David W. Márquez, Attorney General, Juneau, for the Appellee.
Before: Coats, Chief Judge, and Mannheimer and Stewart, Judges.
MEMORANDUM OPINION
Aaron J. St. Clair, Jr. robbed a cab driver and attempted to kill him. St. Clair ultimately reached a plea bargain with the State in which he agreed to plead guilty to a single charge of attempted murder. The State, for its part, dismissed three other pending felony charges (first-degree robbery, first-degree assault, and evidence tampering), and also agreed not to pursue its investigation of St. Clair's potential sexual abuse of three minors, as well as St. Clair's potential involvement in four other robberies.
Attempted murder is an unclassified felony that carries a mandatory minimum penalty of 5 years' imprisonment and a maximum penalty of 99 years' imprisonment. Superior Court Judge Larry R. Weeks sentenced St. Clair to serve 35 years for the attempted murder. (St. Clair's sentence is 50 years with 15 years suspended.)
AS 11.31.100(d)(1) (attempted murder is an unclassified felony); AS 12.55.125(b) (specifying the penalty range for attempted murder).
St. Clair appeals this sentence, contending that 35 years to serve is excessive. For the reasons explained here, we affirm Judge Weeks's sentencing decision.
Underlying facts
On the night of January 7, 2004, St. Clair and his wife summoned a cab. The cab driver who answered their call was Eric Drake.
St. Clair's wife took the front passenger seat of the cab, while St. Clair seated himself in the rear seat of the cab, behind Drake. All of a sudden, St. Clair grabbed Drake's forehead, brought out a knife, and cut Drake's throat. This knife wound was long and deep; it exposed the entire interior anatomy of Drake's neck, and it came within millimeters of slicing his jugular vein. There was no conversation between the two men before St. Clair attacked Drake.
After slashing Drake's throat, St. Clair stabbed Drake in the chest, and then in the abdomen. St. Clair left the knife in Drake's abdomen and told him, "I'm going to kill you if you don't give me your money."
Drake tossed his wallet to St. Clair's wife. But then, instead of stopping the attack, St. Clair started to pull Drake's head back again. Drake bit one of St. Clair's fingers — at which point, St. Clair started hitting Drake in the head with the knife. Drake thought to himself, "they can repair my hands, but not my life," so he grabbed the blade of the knife and struggled with St. Clair for control of the weapon. (As a result, Drake suffered severe injuries to his fingers.)
While Drake struggled for control of the knife, he asked St. Clair to "ease up" because he had a family. According to Drake, St. Clair did ease up a bit, but he continued the attack. At this point, Drake decided to play dead. This tactic worked; St. Clair stopped attacking him and left the cab.
Although he was severely wounded, Drake managed to get out of his cab and go to a nearby motel. His fingers were so damaged that he had to use his thumbs to open the door. The motel clerk called 911. Drake was taken to the hospital, where he underwent several hours of surgery.
During the investigation of this case, the Juneau police uncovered evidence that St. Clair had committed several other felonies. St. Clair had sexually attacked three minor girls (on separate occasions), and he had committed three other robberies, including the armed robbery of another cab driver and the robbery of a mentally impaired man who offered to buy food for St. Clair and his wife. In addition, St. Clair helped to plan the armed robbery of a Juneau movie theater. The other planner then proceeded to commit this crime alone, so that he would not have to split the proceeds with St. Clair. St. Clair was angry that he had been left out of this robbery.
As already explained, the plea bargain in this case guaranteed that St. Clair would not be charged in connection with these other crimes. However, the pre-sentence report contained descriptions of these other crimes. And, at St. Clair's sentencing, Judge Weeks found that most of these other crimes had been proved. The judge declared his belief that St. Clair had committed two of the sexual assaults, that St. Clair had committed the robbery of the cab driver and the robbery of the mentally impaired man, and that St. Clair had helped to plan the robbery of the movie theater.
Is St. Clair's sentence clearly mistaken?
As explained above, the sentencing range for attempted murder is 5 to 99 years. St. Clair received 35 years to serve. The question in this appeal is whether Judge Weeks's sentencing decision is "clearly mistaken".
See McClain v. State, 519 P.2d 811, 813-14 (Alaska 1974) (an appellate court is to affirm a sentencing decision unless the decision is clearly mistaken).
St. Clair points out that he is a youthful first felony offender. (St. Clair was 21 years old at the time of sentencing.) St. Clair also points out that, although he may have attacked the cab driver with the intention of killing him, he later voluntarily ended the attack, and the cab driver survived.
Judge Weeks acknowledged that St. Clair was young, and that there was still time for him to turn his life around. The judge stated, "Someone [who is] twenty-one, you have to give them the benefit of hope for the future — that sometime along the way . . . they can change the way they are." Nevertheless, Judge Weeks declared his belief that "during the course of this robbery, . . . Mr. St. Clair truly intended to kill Mr. Drake," and that it was merely fortuitous that Drake did not die.
As mentioned above, based on the pre-sentence report's descriptions of St. Clair's other crimes, Judge Weeks found that St. Clair had committed "another brutal robbery . . . of a cab driver", that St. Clair had robbed the mentally impaired man, that St. Clair had helped to plan the robbery of the movie theater, and that St. Clair had committed at least two of the three sexual assaults on minors described in the pre-sentence report.
Based on St. Clair's conduct in this case, as well as his commission of these other crimes, Judge Weeks concluded that St. Clair's behavior demonstrated that he has "[an] anti-social nature or dangerous tendencies posing a clear risk to the public." The judge continued:
The Court: I don't ignore the possibility of rehabilitation, but I believe that the potential of Mr. St. Clair for rehabilitation is guarded, and I don't put as much weight on that as I do on the long-term demonstrations of things he's done in the past, [his apparent] enjoyment of [his] dangerous tendencies and [his] anti-social nature. [His] anger at being left out of the armed robbery of the cinema causes the Court concern. And I think that those things reflect a mentality and a state of mind that augurs against rehabilitation.
The sentencing record shows that Judge Weeks gave careful consideration to the sentencing criteria codified in AS 12.55.005. The sentencing range for St. Clair's crime was 5 to 99 years. Given St. Clair's conduct in this case, and given his other crimes described above, we can not say that a sentence of 35 years to serve is clearly mistaken.
The sentencing decision of the superior court is AFFIRMED.