Opinion
Court of Appeals No. A-12074 No. 6744
12-12-2018
STATE OF ALASKA, Appellant, v. P.W., Appellee.
Appearances: Timothy W. Terrell, Assistant Attorney General, Office of Criminal Appeals, Anchorage, and Craig W. Richards and Jahna Lindemuth, Attorneys General, Juneau, for the Appellant. Douglas O. Moody, Assistant Public Defender, and Quinlan Steiner, Public Defender, Anchorage, 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 Appeal from the Superior Court, Fourth Judicial District, Fairbanks, Paul R. Lyle, Judge. Appearances: Timothy W. Terrell, Assistant Attorney General, Office of Criminal Appeals, Anchorage, and Craig W. Richards and Jahna Lindemuth, Attorneys General, Juneau, for the Appellant. Douglas O. Moody, Assistant Public Defender, and Quinlan Steiner, Public Defender, Anchorage, 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).
In early April 2012, a Fairbanks police officer stopped a pickup truck for equipment violations. The driver of this truck, P.W., was driving with a revoked license.
P.W. falsely identified himself to the police, and he lied about where the truck had come from. The police eventually located the owner of the truck, and they obtained permission to search the vehicle. Inside the truck, the police discovered a substantial quantity of drugs and over $4600 in cash.
P.W. was initially charged with two misdemeanors: driving with a revoked license, and providing false identifying information to the police. He pleaded guilty to both of these charges, and he was sentenced to a composite 100 days in jail.
Former AS 28.15.291(a)(1) (pre-2016) and AS 11.56.800(a)(1)(B)(I), respectively.
The police did not refer the drug charges to the district attorney's office — because, immediately after he was arrested, P.W. began negotiating with the Fairbanks police, and later with the Alaska State Troopers, to work as a confidential informant in other drug cases. Eventually, the police and the troopers concluded that P.W. was not a suitable informant, and the drug charges went forward. But P.W. was not indicted on these felony drug offenses until November 2013.
After P.W. was indicted, his attorney moved to dismiss the drug charges, arguing that these charges were barred by Alaska Criminal Rule 45, the speedy trial rule.
Specifically, the defense attorney argued that all of the charges against P.W. — the initial two misdemeanor charges of driving with a revoked license and providing false identifying information, as well as the later felony drug charges — arose out of "the same criminal episode". Under this theory, the time limit for bringing P.W. to trial on the felony drug charges began running on the same day that he was served with the revoked license and false information charges. See Criminal Rule 45(c)(3).
The superior court granted P.W.'s motion to dismiss the felony drug charges. The court concluded that the two initial misdemeanor charges and the later felony drug charges were all part of the "same criminal episode" because P.W.'s motive for lying about his identity was to prevent the police from finding out that his license was revoked, and then taking control of the truck, searching it, and finding the drugs.
The State now appeals.
Why we reinstate the felony drug charges against P.W.
As we have explained, the superior court concluded that there was a "causal connection" between P.W.'s crime of lying about his identity and the later-filed felony drug charges, in that P.W.'s motive for lying was to prevent the police from searching the truck and finding the drugs. In reaching this conclusion, the superior court placed special emphasis on a passage from this Court's opinion in Pitka v. State, 19 P.3d 604 (Alaska App. 2001).
Pitka involved a defendant who was arrested for criminal trespass and criminal mischief. During Pitka's arrest, the police discovered cocaine in his pocket, but the State did not indict Pitka for possession of cocaine until six months after Pitka was prosecuted for criminal trespass and criminal mischief. Pitka moved to dismiss the later-filed drug charge, asserting that this drug charge arose from the "same criminal episode" as the trespass and criminal mischief charges, and that therefore the time for bringing him to trial under Criminal Rule 45 had already run.
Pitka, 19 P.3d at 605.
Id. at 606-07.
The superior court rejected this argument, and this Court affirmed the superior court's ruling on appeal. In our decision, we acknowledged that Pitka's possession of the cocaine was contemporaneous with his acts of trespass and criminal mischief, and that Pitka's possession of cocaine had "some arguable relevance" to his acts of trespass and criminal mischief, in that Pitka's consumption of cocaine could have been part of the reason why he committed these other crimes. But we explained that this arguable relevancy did not mean that the drug charge "[arose] out of the same criminal episode" as the trespass and criminal mischief.
Id. at 607.
Ibid.
Ibid.
We pointed out that the drug charge shared no elements with the two other charges, and that the evidence needed to prove the drug charge was materially different from the evidence used to prove the other two charges. We also noted that there was no nexus between Pitka's drug offense and his other two offenses. But we supported this ruling with the following observation:
Ibid.
Ibid.
Pitka has not suggested that his acts of trespass and criminal mischief were motivated by a desire to obtain or sell cocaine, or that these acts were related in any other way to his possession of cocaine.Pitka, 19 P.3d at 607.
In P.W.'s case, the superior court concluded that this passage from Pitka supported P.W.'s argument that all of his offenses arose from the same criminal episode — and that the time for bringing P.W. to trial under Criminal Rule 45 had therefore expired.
As we have explained, the superior court found that P.W. falsely identified himself to the police because he wished to avoid having the police learn that his driver's license was revoked, then seize the truck and discover the drugs and the cash inside it. In other words, the superior court concluded that P.W.'s motive for committing the first offense (providing false information) was to prevent the police from discovering evidence of his drug offenses.
Based on this finding about P.W.'s motive for lying to the police, and based on the above-quoted language from Pitka, the superior court concluded that P.W.'s case was the opposite of Pitka — i.e., it was a situation where the defendant's minor crime (providing false identifying information) was "motivated by the desire" to advance the defendant's more serious crimes (the felony drug offenses), and thus all of the offenses should be deemed to comprise a single "criminal episode".
While this was a plausible reading of Pitka, we recently rejected this interpretation of Pitka in State v. Baker, 425 P.3d 210 (Alaska App. 2018). In Baker, we clarified the potentially misleading language from Pitka that the superior court relied on in P.W.'s case.
As we explained in Baker, the "same criminal episode" provision of Criminal Rule 45(c)(3) derives from former Standard 12-2.2 of the American Bar Association's Standards for Criminal Justice. The ABA commentary to that former standard explained that the term "same criminal episode" was intended to cover situations where a defendant committed related criminal acts such as "the simultaneous robbery of seven individuals", "the killing of several people with successive shots from a gun", "the successive burning of three pieces of property", or "such contemporaneous and related crimes as burglary and larceny, or kidnapping and robbery."
Baker, 425 P.3d at 212.
Id. at 213.
We then clarified that, for purposes of Criminal Rule 45(c)(3), even when offenses occur close in time, they should not be deemed to arise out of the "same criminal episode" unless "there is a close elemental or evidentiary overlap between the charged offenses", or unless "there is a causal link that directly connects the commission of one criminal offense to the other offense" — a link "such as exists in the contemporaneous and related crimes of burglary and larceny [or] kidnapping and robbery".
Ibid. (quoting the ABA Standards for Criminal Justice (2nd ed. 1982), commentary to Standard 12-2.2(a), page 12-21).
With this clarification, we then turned to the language of our decision in Pitka — the passage where we noted that there was no suggestion that Pitka's acts of trespass and criminal mischief "were motivated by a desire to obtain or sell cocaine".
Id. at 215.
We acknowledged that this portion of Pitka had sometimes been misconstrued as suggesting that any articulable relationship between two criminal acts would be sufficient to make them part of the same criminal episode for purposes of Criminal Rule 45(c)(3). But we clarified that the intent of this passage "was only to highlight the absence of any direct causal relationship between the criminal offenses at issue in Pitka", and "to distinguish [Pitka's] crimes from such contemporaneous and related crimes as burglary and larceny, or robbery and kidnapping referred to in the relevant ABA Commentary."
Ibid.
Ibid. (quoting the ABA Standards for Criminal Justice (2nd ed. 1982), commentary to Standard 12-2.2(a), page 12-21).
Applying this narrowed reading of Pitka to the facts of Baker's case, we concluded that Baker's crime of driving with a revoked license did not arise out of the "same criminal episode" as Baker's crime of possessing cocaine with intent to distribute, even though Baker drove his vehicle to facilitate a particular act of cocaine distribution.
Id. at 216. --------
We reach an analogous conclusion here. P.W.'s two offenses — providing false identifying information to the police, and possession of controlled substances — do not have the same relationship as burglary and larceny, or robbery and kidnapping. In these pairs of offenses, the defendant commits one crime so that the defendant can immediately engage in another crime. Here, P.W. had already committed his felony drug offenses before the police pulled him over and he lied about his identity.
While the superior court could justifiably find that P.W. falsely identified himself because he wanted to conceal his felony drug offenses, P.W. did not provide this false information so that he could then immediately proceed to commit the drug offenses. Accordingly, these offenses did not arise out of the "same criminal episode" for purposes of Criminal Rule 45(c)(3) — and, therefore, Criminal Rule 45 did not bar the State from trying P.W. on those drug charges.
Conclusion
We REVERSE the decision of the superior court, and we reinstate the indictment against P.W.