Opinion ID: 2585567
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Alaska Statute 25.23.180 Is Constitutional.

Text: Farley next argues that AS 25.23.180 violates the due process and equal protection clauses of the state and federal constitutions. [31] Relying on Baker v. City of Fairbanks , where we held that criminal prosecutions include offenses which, even if incarceration is not a possible punishment, connote criminal conduct in the traditional sense of the term, [32] Farley reasons that AS 25.23.180 amounts to a criminal provision. He emphasizes that the statute requires the trial court to render a judgment against the non-custodial birth parent ... that that parent is guilty of a heinous criminal act, and prescribes a punishment far greater than any prison term; namely the loss of one's child. Farley thus proposes that [t]he facts of this case call for the same constitutional protection[s] that apply in criminal proceedings, namely, the right to a jury trial and the requirement of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. But this reasoning is faulty for several reasons. Because adoption hearings are not proceedings brought by the state to punish offenders for acts of misconduct, an adoption order that terminates parental rights under AS 25.23.180 does not, realistically speaking, amount to an offense; neither does it connote criminal conduct in the traditional sense of the term. [33] And since adoption proceedings are confidential, a father whose parental rights are terminated faces neither the moral opprobrium [34] that normally accompanies a sexual assault conviction nor the collateral consequences of a formally `criminal' conviction  i.e., the stigma of being labeled a `criminal.' [35] As we recently observed, punishment for past misconduct is the implicit sine qua non of a `criminal prosecution.' [36] Yet even when questions of conception by sexual assault arise under AS 25.23.180(c)(3), punitive purpose plays no role in adoption proceedings. The purpose of A.F.M.'s adoption hearing was not to punish Farley for his past misconduct; it was to determine A.F.M.'s future custody in accordance with her best interests. Thus, in the analogous procedural setting of an appeal arising from child-in-need-of-aid adjudication, we have refused to characterize termination of parental rights as a criminal proceeding, relying on the termination's non-punitive purpose. [37] Despite the state's participation as the prosecuting party in such cases, we have reasoned that a termination order is non-criminal because the parent is neither charged with criminal behavior nor subject to incarceration as a direct consequence of the proceeding. [38] Farley attempts to distinguish his case from a termination occurring in a CINA proceeding. He argues that under AS 25.23.180(c)(3), the birth father is charged with very serious criminal behavior, that the court is called upon to ... [make] a determination that he is guilty, and that [t]he direct result of such a judgment is the loss of the cherished constitutional right to bear and raise children. This argument is unpersuasive. The right to direct the upbringing of one's child is undeniably one of the most basic of all civil liberties. [39] As we noted in extending the right to court-appointed counsel to a biological parent who faced termination of parental rights in an adoption proceeding, loss of custody is often recognized as `punishment more severe than many criminal sanctions.' [40] But neither the fundamental nature of the rights at stake nor the criminal nature of the conduct that place those rights in jeopardy alters an adoption proceeding's essentially non-punitive purpose. And because the proceeding's basic purpose remains unchanged, a claim of conception by sexual assault does not convert the adoption into a criminal trial. Admittedly, an order terminating parental rights in such a case is, in Farley's words, a direct result of the father's sexual misconduct. Yet the termination is not an automatic consequence of the misconduct, and, more importantly, the father's rights are not the only rights at issue. By asserting his parental right to resist A.F.M.'s adoption, Farley necessarily implicated the equally vital rights of A.F.M. and her mother. [41] Alaska Statute 25.23.180(c)(3) implicitly recognizes the need to balance these competing rights by authorizing termination only upon a finding that sexual assault resulted in conception of the child and that termination of the parental rights of the biological parent is in the best interests of the child. [42] Thus, while Farley's sexual assault of Laura was unquestionably important, it by no means was the only, or even the determining, factor in the court's decision to terminate his rights. Because AS 25.23.180(c)(3) required the court to evaluate Farley's sexual assault in relation to A.F.M.'s best interests, the statute gave his illegal actions significance not as past conduct that deserved punitive sanction, but as a present circumstance that promised lasting damage to A.F.M.'s ability to form a healthy bond with Farley. In so doing, the statute simply recognized the practical reality that [i]t is not the brute biological fact of parentage, but the existence of an actual or potential relationship that society recognizes as worthy of respect and protection, that activates the constitutional claim. [43] In short, because proceedings under AS 25.23.180(c)(3) serve important non-punitive ends, we uphold the statute's constitutionality as a non-criminal measure. [44]