Opinion
Court of Appeals No. A-11568 Court of Appeals No. A-11577 No. 6425
02-01-2017
JOHN ANDREW SAMSKAR, Appellant, v. STATE OF ALASKA, Appellee.
Appearances: Glenda J. Kerry, Girdwood, for the Appellant. Samuel D. Scott, Assistant District Attorney, Kenai, 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 Nos. 3KN-12-025 CR & 3KN-11-1669 CR
MEMORANDUM OPINION
Appeal from the District Court, Third Judicial District, Kenai, Jennifer K. Wells, Magistrate Judge. Appearances: Glenda J. Kerry, Girdwood, for the Appellant. Samuel D. Scott, Assistant District Attorney, Kenai, and Michael C. Geraghty, Attorney General, Juneau, for the Appellee. Before: Mannheimer, Chief Judge, Allard, Judge, and Suddock, Superior Court Judge. Judge MANNHEIMER.
Sitting by assignment made pursuant to Article IV, Section 16 of the Alaska Constitution and Administrative Rule 24(d).
John Andrew Samskar appeals his conviction for driving under the influence.
At his trial, Samskar offered the defense that he was sleep-driving (i.e., not consciously driving) as a result of taking a combination of prescription drugs. As we recently held in Wagner v. State, ___ P.3d ___ (Alaska App. 2017), a defendant has a valid defense to a charge of driving under the influence if (1) the defendant took a prescription dose of a medication, (2) the defendant was rendered unconscious by this drug and engaged in sleep-driving, and (3) the defendant neither knew nor had reason to anticipate that the drug would have this effect. Id., slip opinion at 6.
In Samskar's case, the trial judge ruled that his proposed sleep-driving defense was a valid defense under Alaska law; she therefore allowed Samskar to pursue this defense and argue it to the jury. The judge also instructed the jury on this defense — including an instruction that it was the State's burden to prove (beyond a reasonable doubt) that Samskar was conscious when he was driving.
In this appeal, Samskar acknowledges that the judge instructed the jury on his sleep-driving defense — specifically, that if there was a reasonable possibility that Samskar was sleep-driving, then he should be acquitted.
But Samskar argues that the judge's instructions on this point were misleading and confusing, and that they failed to adequately convey that it was the State's burden to prove that Samskar engaged in voluntary (i.e., conscious) driving. Samskar contends that his defense attorney proposed a significantly better jury instruction on these matters, and that the trial judge abused her discretion when she failed to give the defense attorney's proposed instruction.
When a defendant asserts that their proposed jury instructions were worded better than the ones the trial judge gave, an appellate court must evaluate whether the defendant's version of the instructions would have "substantially aided" the jury's consideration of the case. Stoneking v. State, 800 P.2d 949, 951 (Alaska App. 1990); Wortham v. State, 689 P.2d 1133, 1143 (Alaska App. 1984).
In Samskar's case, the trial judge gave the jury three instructions that dealt with Samskar's defense that he was rendered unconscious by his ingestion of prescription drugs.
Jury Instruction 21 informed the jurors that "involuntary intoxication" was a valid defense to the charge of driving under the influence, and that "[a] person is involuntarily intoxicated if he ... knowingly ingested a prescribed drug(s) and did not know or reasonably could not have known of the drugs' intoxicating effects."
Jury Instruction 22 informed the jurors that if Samskar's unconsciousness resulted from voluntary intoxication, this would not be a defense — and that voluntary intoxication included instances where a person ingested drugs and "knew or reasonably should have known that the drug(s) could produce an intoxicating effect."
Finally, Jury Instruction 23 told the jurors that Samskar was not guilty of driving under the influence if he drove while he was "legally unconscious" — that is, while he was "not conscious of his actions". The instruction then continued:
Legal unconsciousness may be caused by involuntary intoxication.
Legal unconsciousness cannot be caused by voluntary intoxication.
The state must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that [Samskar] was conscious during the commission of the offense. If there is proof beyond a reasonable doubt that [Samskar] acted as if he was conscious during the commission of the alleged offense, you should conclude he was conscious, unless from all of the evidence you have a reasonable doubt that he was conscious. If based on all of the evidence you have a reasonable doubt that he was conscious, you must find that he was unconscious.
We agree with Samskar that Instruction 23 is unnecessarily difficult to follow, and we caution judges against using it in the future. But the instruction does correctly state the applicable law.
Instruction 23 told the jurors that Samskar was not guilty of DUI if, at the time he was driving, he was not conscious of his actions as a result of being "involuntarily" intoxicated. And as we have explained, a companion jury instruction (Instruction 21) told the jurors that a person is involuntarily intoxicated if the person "knowingly ingested ... prescribed drug(s) and did not know or reasonably could not have known of the drugs' intoxicating effects." This is essentially the test that we adopted in Wagner.
Instruction 23 also informed the jurors that it was the State's burden "[to] prove beyond a reasonable doubt that [Samskar] was conscious during the commission of the offense" — and that if the jurors had a reasonable doubt as to whether Samskar was conscious, they were required to find that he was unconscious.
This last portion of the instruction was actually worded ambiguously in a way that was favorable to Samskar. It was not the State's burden to prove that Samskar was conscious when he was driving. Rather, it was the State's burden to show either that Samskar was conscious when he was driving or that Samskar's lack of consciousness stemmed from negligent use of prescription medication — i.e., ingestion of medication when he knew or had reason to anticipate that the medication might cause him to sleep-drive.
Instruction 23 was unnecessarily complicated. There was no point in asking the jury to learn and apply concepts like "legal unconsciousness". It would have been better if the trial judge had simply instructed the jury that, once Samskar raised the defense of sleep-driving, it was the State's burden to prove beyond a reasonable doubt either (1) that Samskar was not sleep-driving (i.e., that he was conscious while he was driving), or (2) that Samskar's lack of consciousness was due to his negligent use of medication.
But the alternative jury instruction that Samskar's attorney proposed did not contain an appreciably better description of this law. If anything, Samskar's proposed instruction did a worse job. In particular, Samskar's instruction failed to distinguish between unconsciousness caused by negligent use of medication and unconsciousness caused by non-negligent use of medication.
Samskar's proposed instruction read:
To be liable for a crime under Alaska law, a person must perform a voluntary act that the person is capable of performing. A "voluntary act" means a bodily movement performed consciously as a result of effort and determination. If you find that the state has failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant voluntarily drove a motor vehicle while under the influence of a controlled substance, you must find the defendant not guilty.
For these reasons, we conclude that the trial judge did not abuse her discretion when she gave Jury Instructions 21 through 23 instead of the jury instruction that Samskar's attorney proposed.
The judgement of the district court is AFFIRMED.