Opinion ID: 1124484
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Alaska Precedent Mandates Application of a Criminal Negligence Standard.

Text: Turning to the merits of the decision, the opinion of the court does considerable violence to precedent. In Speidel v. State, 460 P.2d 77 (Alaska 1969), we expressly rejected a civil negligence standard as defining the minimum mens rea for criminal punishment. See id. at 80 (To convict a person of a felony ... without proving criminal intent, is to deprive such person of due process of law.). The court articulates no basis for distinguishing Speidel. [3] I see no basis for concluding that Speidel does not control, or that it does not require application of a criminal negligence standard. Many of the decisions upon which the court relies reject strict liability rather than civil negligence, as the court states. Maj. op. at 879. However, these decisions in fact do not authorize civil negligence as the minimum mens rea for criminal punishment. See, e.g., Hentzner v. State, 613 P.2d 821, 825 (Alaska 1980) (requiring an awareness of wrongdoing for criminal liability); Alex v. State, 484 P.2d 677, 682 (Alaska 1971) (holding that crime of escape required intentional departure from custody); Kimoktoak v. State, 584 P.2d 25, 29-30 (Alaska 1978) (implying in a criminal hit-and-run statute a requirement that the defendant have knowingly failed to stop and render assistance), superseded by statute on other grounds as noted in Wylie v. State, 797 P.2d 651, 660 n. 8 (Alaska App. 1990). Demonstrably, these cases do not support the proposition that a civil negligence standard provides the minimum mens rea for a criminal conviction. To the contrary, these decisions reject a strict liability standard not in favor of a civil negligence standard but in favor of a requirement of criminal intent. See, e.g., Hentzner, 613 P.2d at 825 ([C]riminal intent is an essential predicate of criminal liability.); Kimoktoak, 584 P.2d at 29 (requiring criminal intent to support conviction); Alex, 484 P.2d at 681 ([T]o constitute guilt there must be not only a wrongful act but a criminal intention.). It could be argued, as the court concludes, that criminal intent means any mental state the legislature determines to be required for the particular crime, excepting only strict liability. However, in Alex, the court noted that for criminal intent to exist, [it] is imperative ... that an accused's act be other than simply inadvertent or neglectful. Alex, 484 P.2d at 681 (emphasis added). This statement indicates that criminal intent entails something more than mere neglectfulness or ordinary negligence. This interpretation is strengthened by the fact that the cited decisions all rest upon, and refer with approval to, our decision in Speidel. See, e.g., Hentzner, 613 P.2d at 827; Kimoktoak, 584 P.2d at 29; Alex, 484 P.2d at 681. As noted, Speidel rejected a civil negligence standard in favor of a criminal intent requirement. Speidel, 460 P.2d at 80. Criminal intent, as defined in Alex and Speidel, does not include civil negligence. The court bases much of its argument on State v. Guest, 583 P.2d 836 (Alaska 1978), in which the defendant was accused of statutory rape. We noted that the charge of statutory rape is legally unsupportable under the principles of Speidel, Alex, and Kimoktoak unless a defense of reasonable mistake of age is allowed. Id. at 839. To fail to do so would be to impose criminal liability without any criminal mental element. Id. We then observed that Although AS 11.15.120 is silent as to any requirement of intent, this is true of many felony statutes. The requirement of criminal intent is then commonly inferred. In fact, in such cases, where the particular statute is not a public welfare type of offense, either a requirement of criminal intent must be read into the statute or it must be found unconstitutional. Since statutes should be construed where possible to avoid unconstitutionality, it is necessary here to infer a requirement of criminal intent. Id. (citations and footnotes omitted). The court mischaracterizes Guest in asserting that we upheld the imposition of criminal sanctions on the basis of simple, ordinary negligence. Maj. op. at 879. To the contrary, the issue in Guest involved only whether the defendant's reasonable belief that the victim was of the age of consent negated the criminal intent necessarily implied in the statute. Guest, 583 P.2d at 839-40. The crime itself involved a separate mental state. The discussion in Guest concerning reasonable belief, which the court wrongly equates with simple negligence, [4] involved only the defense, and had no bearing on the core elements required for conviction of the charged offense itself. Guest did not authorize conviction for simple negligence, as the court asserts. Moreover, Guest did not overrule Speidel. Since Speidel remains good law notwithstanding Guest, it is incorrect to assert that Guest approved a civil negligence standard in all cases, as does the court. Since the case at bar considers the criminal intent requirement in the context of a core element of the crime in question, rather than in the context of a defense, Guest does not apply. Our jurisprudence recognizes several exceptions to the minimum criminal intent requirement outlined in the above cases. None of these exceptions are applicable, nor does the court purport to apply any of them. Speidel recognized an exception for public welfare offenses, which relate to the health, safety, and welfare of the public, and which carry penalties that commonly are relatively small, and [do] no grave damage to an offender's reputation. Speidel, 460 P.2d at 78-79 (citing Morissette v. United States, 342 U.S. 246, 250, 72 S.Ct. 240, 243, 96 L.Ed. 288 (1952)). The crime at issue here carries too severe a potential penalty  imprisonment for ninety days  to fall within this exception. See State v. Rice, 626 P.2d 104, 116 (Alaska 1981) (Matthews, J., concurring) ([A]ny prison sentence is an important, even traumatic, event in the life of a human being. .. . Further, any prison sentence is likely to have a considerable detrimental effect on one's reputation.). We also have recognized an exception for activities within a heavily regulated industry. See id. at 107-08. Under that exception, participants in heavily regulated activities have a reduced due process interest as a consequence of that participation, and therefore may be subject to criminal liability under a less culpable mens rea than is ordinarily required. See Beran v. State, 705 P.2d 1280, 1292 (Alaska App. 1985) (Bryner, C.J., concurring) ([T]he state has a legitimate right to hold participants in the [commercial fishing] industry to a higher standard of care than might otherwise be appropriate as a predicate for criminal responsibility.). As the captain of an oil tanker, Hazelwood certainly qualifies as a participant in a heavily regulated industry. However, former AS 46.03.790(a) applied not only to participants in oil production operations, but also to members of the general public. The statute therefore cannot be construed to require a mental state which could not apply to members of the general public, unless one accepts the troublesome proposition that a single passage in a statute can have different meanings for different defendants. For this reason, the court of appeals refused to apply the heavily regulated industry exception to this case. Hazelwood v. State, 912 P.2d 1266, 1279 (Alaska App. 1996). The parties have not challenged that decision. Since none of the exceptions to the minimum mens rea requirement of criminal intent apply, our precedent requires the application of a criminal negligence standard as we held in Speidel and Alex.