Summary
reversing a judge's denial of a continuance to allow weathered-in jurors to arrive by plane
Summary of this case from Thiele v. StateOpinion
Court of Appeals No. A-10990 Trial Court No. 4BE-10-880 CR No. 5968
08-07-2013
HARRY J. NAPOKA, Appellant, v. STATE OF ALASKA, Appellee.
Appearances: Kelly R. Taylor, Assistant Public Defender, and Quinlan Steiner, Public Defender, Anchorage, for the Appellant. Diane L. Wendlandt, Assistant Attorney General, Office of Special Prosecutions and Appeals, Anchorage, and Michael C. Geraghty, Attorney General, Juneau, for the Appellee.
NOTICE
Memorandum decisions of this court do not create legal precedent. See Alaska Appellate Rule 214(d) and Paragraph 7 of the Guidelines for Publication of Court of Appeals Decisions (Court of Appeals Order No. 3). Accordingly, this memorandum decision may not be cited as binding authority for any proposition of law.
MEMORANDUM OPINION
AND JUDGMENT
Appeal from the Superior Court, Fourth Judicial District, Bethel, Natalie K. Finn, Judge.
Appearances: Kelly R. Taylor, Assistant Public Defender, and Quinlan Steiner, Public Defender, Anchorage, for the Appellant. Diane L. Wendlandt, Assistant Attorney General, Office of Special Prosecutions and Appeals, Anchorage, and Michael C. Geraghty, Attorney General, Juneau, for the Appellee.
Before: Mannheimer, Chief Judge, Allard, Judge, and Smith, Superior Court Judge.
Sitting by assignment made pursuant to article IV, section 16 of the Alaska Constitution and Administrative Rule 24(d).
SMITH, Judge.
Harry J. Napoka was convicted by a Bethel jury of assault in the third degree and resisting arrest. On appeal, he contends that his right to an impartial jury was violated when the trial court proceeded with voir dire when most of the prospective village jurors could not appear in Bethel due to a winter storm. We conclude that the trial court abused its discretion by not continuing the jury selection for a couple of days to wait for the storm to abate so that the village jurors could travel to Bethel and be included in the jury pool. We accordingly reverse Napoka's conviction and remand his case to the superior court for a new trial.
Factual and procedural background
Napoka is Yup'ik and resides in Tuluksak, a small village located on the Kuskokwim River about 50 miles upriver from Bethel. Napoka was arrested in Tuluksak in August 2010 and charged with one count of driving under the influence, two counts of resisting arrest, and one count of assault in the second degree. The State alleged that Napoka was driving while intoxicated and that when a village police officer tried to arrest him, he resisted and assaulted the officer in a manner that made it difficult for the officer to breathe. Before the trial started, Napoka pleaded no contest to one count of resisting arrest. He went to trial on the remaining charges.
Bethel serves as the regional center for more than 50 villages in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta and is the presumptive trial site for criminal cases arising in those villages, including Tuluksak. When a trial is to be held in Bethel involving a case that arose in a village, the Alaska Court System routinely summons jurors from both Bethel and the twelve villages, including Tuluksak, that lie within a 50-mile radius of Bethel. This procedure usually results in a venire in which about 50% of the potential jurors are Bethel residents and the other 50% are residents of the nearby villages.
Alaska R. Admin. P. 15(b)-(c).
On December 1, 2010, when Napoka's trial was supposed to start, most villagers could not travel to Bethel because a winter storm kept planes grounded. This same storm precluded the State's witnesses from traveling from Tuluksak to Bethel to testify at the trial.
Instead of waiting until the inclement weather abated, the trial judge decided to question the 42 potential jurors who arrived at the courthouse about their contact with, and experience in, villages. Of these jurors, four had been born in a village (other than Bethel), 17 had spent more than 10 years in a village, and approximately 15 had worked in a village, seven within the previous year and 10 within the previous three years. Only five of the prospective jurors had lived in a village within the previous 10 years.
Napoka's attorney objected to proceeding without a larger number of potential jurors from the villages, noting that most of the potential jurors did not have any recent experience in a village. The prosecutor took no position on the issue, but did indicate some concern about the risk of picking a jury but not being able to proceed with the trial since the State's witnesses also were stuck in Tuluksak.
The trial judge overruled the defense objection, concluding that there had been no "systematic exclusion of a group of people" from the jury pool. The judge noted that "the effort was made to call in jurors [from the villages, but] it is still snowing outside." And based on the jurors' answers to the judge's questions concerning their familiarity with village life, the judge concluded that "this is a jury which adequately represents the community in terms of their history, their work history, their living history, and their area of birth."
Through the rest of that day, and a portion of the next, the court conducted jury selection. At the end of that process (and over Napoka's renewed objection), the court held that the jury pool represented a fair cross-section of the community. The judge then recessed the proceedings until the following day (December 3), because the State's witnesses who lived in Tuluksak were still unable to travel to Bethel due to the weather.
The State's witnesses finally were able to fly to Bethel later that day, and Napoka's trial began on December 3, 2010. Napoka was acquitted of driving under the influence and of assault in the second degree, but he was convicted of assault in the third degree and resisting arrest.
The trial court abused its discretion in refusing to delay jury selection until after the storm abated
The Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution and Article I, section 11 of the Alaska Constitution guarantee criminal defendants the right to an impartial jury. This right includes the right to have the pool of potential jurors drawn from a fair cross-section of the community.
U.S. Const. amend. VI, XIV; Alaska Const. art. 1, § 11.
Taylor v. Lousiana, 419 U.S. 522, 528, 530, 95 S. Ct. 692, 696-97, 42 L. Ed. 2d 690 (1975).
In Alvarado v. State, the Alaska Supreme Court interpreted this "fair cross-section" requirement to mean that, if a crime is committed in a village and the defendant is to be tried in a nearby urban area, the jury pool must include people who reside in villages. The supreme court based this holding on what it described as the "profound" differences of "occupation, economy, domestic relations, politics, language, religion, race, cultural heritage, and geography" that distinguish village life from life in urban areas.
486 P.2d 891 (Alaska 1971).
Id. at 899.
For criminal cases arising in villages in the Bethel region, the Alaska Court System has implemented the Alvarado rule by formulating jury pools that include the residents of villages near Bethel. Napoka does not challenge the constitutionality of this approach, but he contends that the trial judge committed error in his case by proceeding to jury selection with a jury pool consisting only of Bethel residents. He argues that the trial court abused its discretion by failing to delay jury selection until the village jurors could fly to Bethel.
As this Court explained in Erick v. State, the supreme court's decision in Alvarado requires a trial court to make diligent efforts to obtain a jury pool that is representative of the area, if possible. In Napoka's case, the trial judge ruled that the jury pool complied with Alvarado because (1) the judge made a special inquiry about the Bethel jurors' familiarity with village life, and (2) a significant number of jurors in the pool had experience living in the villages.
642 P.2d 821 (Alaska App. 1982).
Id. at 824-25.
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But under the circumstances of Napoka's case, we conclude that this was not a sufficiently diligent effort to satisfy Alvarado. The underlying problem was not the composition of the jury venire that was originally summoned, but rather the inclement weather that prevented a particular contingent of that jury pool — people from the nearby villages — from attending court.
This same inclement weather also prevented the State's primary witnesses, who lived in Tuluksak, from attending court. Thus, the presentation of evidence at Napoka's trial could not begin until the weather abated. Because this was so, there would have been little additional delay if the trial court had delayed jury selection until the weather abated and the prospective jurors from the villages could attend.
Conceivably, there might be circumstances where Alvarado would be satisfied by the type of special voir dire that the trial judge conducted in this case. But we need not decide that question, because the circumstances of Napoka's case show that there was a readily feasible alternative that would have more fully satisfied the policies of Alvarado. By waiting until the storm abated (something that had to be done in any event, because of witness transportation problems), the court could have assembled a jury pool that included people who currently lived in the nearby villages, rather than a pool that included only urban residents, albeit one in which many of the jurors had experience living in villages.
We hold that, under these circumstances, the trial judge's refusal to delay the jury selection was an abuse of discretion. Napoka is entitled to a new trial.
Conclusion
With the exception of the resisting arrest charge to which Napoka pleaded no contest, the judgment of the superior court is REVERSED.