Title: State v. Fremgen

State: alaska

Issuer: Alaska Supreme Court

Document:

914 P.2d 1244 (1996) STATE of Alaska, Petitioner, v. Michael FREMGEN, Respondent. No. S-6926. Supreme Court of Alaska. March 22, 1996. *1245 Eric A. Johnson, Asst. Atty. Gen., Office of Sp. Prosecutions and Appeals, Anchorage, and Bruce M. Botelho, Atty. Gen., Juneau, for petitioner. Mauri Long and Ray R. Brown, Dillon & Findley, P.C., Anchorage, for respondent. Before COMPTON, C.J., RABINOWITZ, MATTHEWS, EASTAUGH, JJ., and CARPENETI, J. pro tem.[*] The Court having previously granted the State's Petition for Hearing, and having considered the parties' briefs and oral arguments, and being fully advised in the premises, hereby enters the following order. IT IS HEREBY ORDERED: 1. The State's Petition for Hearing is DISMISSED as improvidently granted. 2. We have concluded that the State's Petition for Hearing was improvidently granted for the following reasons: The State asks to overrule State v. Guest, 583 P.2d 836 (Alaska 1978); Kimoktoak v. State, 584 P.2d 25 (Alaska 1978); Alex v. State, 484 P.2d 677 (Alaska 1971), and Speidel v. State, 460 P.2d 77 (Alaska 1969), primarily on the ground that this court misread and misapplied Morissette v. United States, 342 U.S. 246, 72 S. Ct. 240, 96 L. Ed. 288 (1952). We have said: Pratt & Whitney Canada, Inc. v. Sheehan, 852 P.2d 1173, 1175-76 (Alaska 1993) (alteration in original).[1] In the present case, we are not persuaded to depart from principles of stare decisis and abandon our Speidel, Alex, Kimoktoak, and Guest line of cases which established that it would be a deprivation of liberty without due process of law to convict a person of a serious crime without the requirement of criminal intent. In establishing this constitutional doctrine we did not view Morissette as controlling precedential authority, but rather were "influenced by and to a great extent followed the United States Supreme Court's opinion[.]" State v. Campbell, 536 P.2d 105, 106 (Alaska 1975). It is the general logic and force of Morissette that influenced our Speidel line of cases, not simply the specific holdings of Morissette regarding federal statutory construction.[2] *1246 In short, we adhere to the principles articulated in Speidel, Alex, Kimoktoak, and Guest that, except for public welfare type of offenses, strict criminal liability without some form of mens rea is violative of Alaska's Constitution. More particularly, we reaffirm our holding in Guest and reiterate that a refusal to allow the mistake-of-age defense to the charge of statutory rape would be to impose criminal liability without a criminal mental element and consequently would violate Alaska's Constitution. [*] Sitting by assignment made under article IV, section 16 of the Alaska Constitution. [1] See also Beesley v. Van Doren, 873 P.2d 1280, 1283 (Alaska 1994). [2] In this regard, the Supreme Court in Morissette v. United States, 342 U.S. 246, 250-51, 72 S. Ct. 240, 96 L. Ed. 288 (1952), said: The contention that an injury can amount to a crime only when inflicted by intention is no provincial or transient notion. It is as universal and persistent in mature systems of law as belief in freedom of the human will and a consequent ability and duty of the normal individual to choose between good and evil. .. . Crime, as a compound concept, generally constituted only from concurrence of an evil-meaning mind with an evil-doing hand, was congenial to an intense individualism and took deep and early root in American soil. As the states codified the common law of crimes, even if their enactments were silent on the subject, their courts assumed that the omission did not signify disapproval of the principle but merely recognized that intent was so inherent in the idea of the offense that it required no statutory affirmation. Courts, with little hesitation or division, found an implication of the requirement as to offenses that were taken over from the common law. The unanimity with which they have adhered to the central thought that wrongdoing must be conscious to be criminal is emphasized by the variety, disparity and confusion of their definitions of the requisite but elusive mental element. (Footnotes omitted.)