Opinion
Court of Appeals No. A-11547 No. 6129
12-24-2014
DALLAS DARREL FLOYD, Appellant, v. STATE OF ALASKA, Appellee.
Appearances: Gayle J. Brown, Anchorage, for the Appellant. Mary B. Pinkel, Assistant Attorney General, Criminal Division Central Office, 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. Trial Court No. 3AN-12-6652 CI
t/w 3AN-09-9050 CR
MEMORANDUM OPINION
Appeal from the Superior Court, Third Judicial District, Anchorage, Michael Spaan, Judge. Appearances: Gayle J. Brown, Anchorage, for the Appellant. Mary B. Pinkel, Assistant Attorney General, Criminal Division Central Office, Anchorage, and Michael C. Geraghty, Attorney General, Juneau, for the Appellee. Before: Mannheimer, Chief Judge, Allard, Judge, and Hanley, District Court Judge. PER CURIAM.
Sitting by assignment made pursuant to Article IV, Section 16 of the Alaska Constitution and Administrative Rule 24(d).
Dallas Darrel Floyd filed a post-conviction relief application challenging the parole board's authority to revoke his parole. Floyd asserted that Alaska's mandatory parole statutes conflict with Alaska's good time credit statutes, and that it is therefore unlawful to subject prisoners to mandatory parole supervision when they are released from prison as a result of good time credit.
While Floyd's post-conviction relief litigation was pending, Floyd reached the end of his mandatory parole supervision, and he was unconditionally released from his sentence. The State thereupon asked the superior court to dismiss Floyd's postconviction relief lawsuit as moot.
Although Floyd agreed that his claim was moot, he argued that the public interest exception to the mootness doctrine applied to his case and that the superior court should therefore deny the State's motion to dismiss. The superior court declined to apply the public interest exception to Floyd's case, and the court granted the State's motion to dismiss Floyd's application for post-conviction relief. Floyd now appeals the superior court's decision.
A lawsuit is moot if a court would not be able to give the plaintiff any remedy even if the court ruled in the plaintiff's favor. The public interest exception to the mootness doctrine allows a court to continue to entertain litigation, despite its mootness, if: (1) the disputed legal issue is capable of repetition; (2) the issue is the kind that will likely always become moot before appellate review can be conducted — thus allowing the issue to repeatedly escape appellate review unless the court relaxed the normal rule of mootness; and (3) the issue is of important public interest.
Clark v. State, Dep't of Corr., 156 P.3d 384, 387 (Alaska 2007).
Id.
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Here, Floyd's post-conviction relief litigation became moot when he was unconditionally released from his mandatory parole supervision. And Floyd's case does not fall under the public interest exception because, as the superior court pointed out, Floyd's legal claim can be raised in the future by other prisoners who receive longer sentences than Floyd — prisoners who will be on mandatory parole for much longer than Floyd, and who will therefore remain under state supervision throughout the litigation of their post-conviction relief claim.
For this reason, we conclude that the superior court properly declined to apply the public interest exception to the mootness doctrine in Floyd's case.
The judgment of the superior court is AFFIRMED.