Opinion
Court of Appeals No. A-12277 No. 6756
01-23-2019
TY S. DOUGLAS, Appellant, v. STATE OF ALASKA, Appellee.
Appearances: Callie Patton Kim, Assistant Public Defender, and Quinlan Steiner, Public Defender, Anchorage, for the Appellant. Diane L. Wendlandt, Assistant Attorney General, Office of Criminal Appeals, Anchorage, and Jahna Lindemuth, 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. Trial Court No. 1JU-13-715 CI
MEMORANDUM OPINION
Appeal from the Superior Court, First Judicial District, Juneau, David V. George, Judge. Appearances: Callie Patton Kim, Assistant Public Defender, and Quinlan Steiner, Public Defender, Anchorage, for the Appellant. Diane L. Wendlandt, Assistant Attorney General, Office of Criminal Appeals, Anchorage, and Jahna Lindemuth, Attorney General, Juneau, for the Appellee. Before: Mannheimer, Chief Judge, and Allard, Judge. PER CURIAM.
Ty S. Douglas was convicted of two counts of first-degree sexual assault and two counts of fourth-degree sexual assault against his girlfriend. This Court affirmed his convictions on direct appeal.
Douglas v. State, 151 P.3d 495, 497 (Alaska App. 2006).
Douglas subsequently petitioned for post-conviction relief, alleging multiple claims of ineffective assistance of counsel, only one of which is at issue in this appeal. Douglas claimed that his trial attorney was ineffective for failing to retain a medical expert to counter the State's expert (an emergency room doctor), who testified to the extensive injuries to the victim's anal and vaginal areas. According to Douglas, a qualified defense expert could have testified that the victim's injuries were inconsistent with her claim that Douglas had violently penetrated her and were instead consistent with Douglas's claim that he kicked her in the groin.
Douglas was appointed a contract attorney with the Office of Public Advocacy to represent him in his application for post-conviction relief. The attorney hired a Palmer emergency room doctor to review the medical evidence presented by the State at trial. But the doctor reached the same conclusion as the State's expert — that the victim had been sexually penetrated. According to later testimony, the doctor acknowledged that "there were instances in which medical evidence of penetration might be ambiguous, but this was not one of those cases."
Douglas was not satisfied with the emergency room doctor's medical opinion or the doctor's level of expertise. Douglas therefore pressed his attorney to hire a second expert who was a sexual-assault specialist to determine if a specialist would come to the same conclusion. However, the Office of Public Advocacy refused to provide funds for a second expert, asserting that the emergency room doctor's opinion was sufficient for purposes of evaluating Douglas's underlying claim: that his trial attorney was incompetent for failing to hire a defense medical expert for Douglas's trial.
The superior court held an ex parte hearing to address Douglas's request for a second expert. After hearing from Douglas, Douglas's post-conviction relief attorney, and the deputy director of the Office of Public Advocacy, the court denied Douglas's request. The court found that the agency had met its obligation to properly investigate Douglas's ineffective assistance of counsel claim by retaining the emergency room doctor to evaluate any potential medical basis for Douglas's claim.
Following these proceedings, Douglas's post-conviction relief attorney filed an amended application for post-conviction relief that did not contain the claim that his attorney was ineffective for failing to hire a defense medical expert. The superior court held an evidentiary hearing on these other post-conviction relief claims and ultimately denied them on their merits.
On appeal, Douglas does not challenge the denial of these other post-conviction relief claims. Instead, his sole claim is that the superior court erred in refusing to order the office of Public Advocacy to fund a second expert to evaluate the State's medical evidence. According to Douglas, the court's ruling deprived him of his right to effective assistance of counsel in the post-conviction relief action, by denying him the right to hire a properly qualified medical expert.
In response, the State argues that Douglas has no right to choose his own expert. The State also argues that Douglas cannot raise this issue on appeal and instead must file a second post-conviction relief application under Grinols v. State.
See Grinols v. State, 10 P.3d 600 (Alaska App. 2000), aff'd, 74 P.3d 889 (Alaska 2003). --------
We conclude that there is no need to resolve the procedural questions raised by the State's briefing because the current record demonstrates that no error occurred — i.e., that the agency sufficiently met its obligation to investigate Douglas's claim of ineffective assistance of counsel when it hired the emergency room doctor.
Conclusion
The judgment of the superior court is AFFIRMED.