Court Opinion

ID: 9565337
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 19:19:21.577585+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:19:34.237138
License: Public Domain

MATTHEWS, Justice,
concurring.
I agree with parts II and III of the majority opinion which concern collateral estoppel and double jeopardy, respectively. With respect to part I of the opinion, I concur in the result only.
The statute defining the jurisdiction of the court of appeals, AS 22.07.020, was passed by the Alaska State Legislature in 1980. The language in question in this case is that of subsection (d)(2):
the State has no right of appeal in criminal cases except to test the sufficiency of the indictment or information....
This language was taken, without substantial change, from former AS 22.05.010 defining the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court;1 and from AS 22.10.020(a) defining the appellate jurisdiction of the superior court.2 The relevant language of these two statutes was first enacted by the Alaska State Legislature at the advent of statehood, ch. 50, §§ 1, 17, SLA 1959, and has continued without change. Because there is no legislative history to the contrary, and because nearly identical language was used, the legislature clearly intended that the language used in AS 22.07.020(d)(2) would mean what the language used in former AS 22.05.010 and AS 22.10.020(a) had meant. Any other conclusion would border on the preposterous. If the legislature had intended a different meaning it would not have merely copied the phraseology of the earlier statutes.
The question becomes what the former statutes meant. There are two levels of inquiry. The first pertains to the historical purpose of statutes of this type. The second pertains to what these statutes had been construed to mean prior to enactment of AS 22.07.020(d)(2).
The general rule at common law was that the State could not appeal in a criminal case. In United States v. Sanges, 144 U.S. 310, 12 S.Ct. 609, 36 L.Ed. 445 (1892), the court, after making an exhaustive review of State authorities, summed up the prevailing viéw as follows:
But the decisions above cited conclusively show that under the common law, as generally understood and administered in the United States, and in the absence of any statute expressly giving the right to the State, a writ of error cannot be sued out in a criminal case after a final judgment in favor of the defendant, whether that judgment has been rendered upon a verdict of acquittal, or upon a determination by the court of an issue of law. In either case, the defendant, having been once put upon his trial and discharged by the court, is not again to be vexed for the same cause, unless the legislature, acting within its constitutional authority, has made express provision for a review of the judgment at the insistence of the government.
Id. at 318, 12 S.Ct. at 612, 36 L.Ed. at 448-449. The court made it plain that this rule was generally based on common law grounds rather than constitutional double jeopardy:
In a few states, decisions denying a writ of error to the State after judgment for the defendant on a verdict of acquittal have proceeded upon the ground that to grant it would be to put him twice in jeopardy, in violation of a constitutional provision.
But the courts of many states, including some of the great authority, have denied, upon broader grounds, the right of the State to bring a writ of error in any criminal case whatever, even when the discharge of the defendant was upon the decision of an issue of law by the *395court, as on demurrer to the indictment, motion to quash, special verdict, or motion in arrest of judgment.
Id. at 313, 12 S.Ct. at 610, 36 L.Ed. at 447 (citations omitted).
The purpose of statutes like AS 22.05.010 was not to constrict the right of the prosecution to appeal, for that was the preexisting common law rule, but to provide an exception to the common law rule and allow the prosecution to appeal. This is discussed at length in both the majority opinion and the dissenting opinion of Mr. Justice White in United States v. Sisson, 399 U.S. 267, 293-307, 335-349, 90 S.Ct. 2117, 2131-2138, 2153-2160, 26 L.Ed.2d 608, 626-634, 649-657 (1970). Therefore, from an historical perspective, the purpose of the statutory language is to permit the State to appeal in the circumstances described in the statute.
In State v. Shelton, 368 P.2d 817 (Alaska 1962) this court gave a broad reading to the language of AS 22.05.010 permitting the State to appeal to test the sufficiency of an indictment. In Shelton the indictment had been dismissed on the grounds that it was based on perjured testimony. As in the present case, there was nothing wrong with the form of the indictment. The trial court simply concluded that a substantive legal doctrine required dismissal. We rejected the view that the statutory term “sufficiency” related only to the form of the indictment and held the State could raise on appeal the validity of the rationale underlying dismissal of the case. In so holding we stated that “sufficiency”:
denotes the concept of adequacy and adaptation to a desired end. An indictment has a purpose — to require a defendant to stand trial for a criminal offense with which he is charged. If it is not adequate to answer the purpose for which it is intended, then it is insufficient, regardless of the fact that it may meet all the formal statutory requisites and have all the appearances of validity. When an indictment is dismissed for any reason, the question of its sufficiency may create an issue, and this court has the power of review.
Id. at 820 (emphasis added). This language can only be reasonably read to mean that former AS 22.05.010(a) permitted the State to appeal any dismissal of an indictment or information. Until today, so far as I am aware, this interpretation of Shelton has never been questioned.
The rule of interpretation which governs this case is as follows:
Where a statute has received a contemporaneous and practical interpretation and the statute as interpreted is reenacted, the practical interpretation is accorded greater weight than it ordinarily receives, and is regarded as presumptively the correct interpretation of the law. Because court decisions are readily accessible to public view, the rule has special force when the former construction was made by the judiciary. Thus where the legislature adopts a legislative expression which has received judicial interpretation, such interpretation will be pri-ma facie evidence of the legislative intent.
2A C. Sands, Sutherland Statutory Construction § 49.09, at 256 (4th ed. 1973). Thus, because the legislature reenacted the language formerly contained in AS 22.05.-010 permitting the State to appeal to test the sufficiency of an indictment, it logically can be presumed that the legislature intended the reenacted language to mean what this court had formerly said it meant. That meaning is, as we have seen, that the State may appeal “[w]hen an indictment is dismissed for any reason .... ” Shelton, 368 P.2d at 820. Of course, such a grant of power is limited by constitutional double jeopardy. However, it is not necessary to express in statutory terms this limitation. To do so would be superfluous. Because this interpretation is not different from that given AS 22.07.020(d)(2) by the court of appeals in State v. Michel, 634 P.2d 383 (Alaska App.1981) which was in turn relied upon by that court in the present case, I would affirm the court of appeals’ interpretation.
*396The conclusion of the majority opinion that the State may not appeal but it may take a petition for review was explicitly rejected in State v. Keep, 397 P.2d 973 (Alaska 1965). In Keep, the complaint was dismissed after trial began and the State challenged the dismissal by a petition for review. We held that because the state could not appeal from the final judgment it could not take a petition for review. Doing so would permit “the state to accomplish indirectly what it is prohibited from doing by statute.” Id. at 975.
The logic of this holding seems correct and it is not directly attacked by today’s majority opinion. Instead the majority holds that we implicitly overruled Keep in State v. Browder, 486 P.2d 925 (Alaska 1971). I think very few reasonable people reading Browder would conclude that Keep was intended to be overruled. Keep, as will be recalled, involved an acquittal after trial had begun. Browder involved a conviction at the trial level, an appeal by the defendant to the superior court acting as an intermediate appellate court, a reversal and remand by the superior court, and a petition for review by the state from the order of the superior court to this court. We held that we had jurisdiction to entertain the petition and distinguished Keep on the grounds that a final judgment of acquittal was involved in Keep, but not in Browder. We took pains in Browder to limit our holding to petitions taken from “a non-final order or decision....” Id. 486 P.2d at 931. We have in two separate cases cited Keep and Browder together, State v. Gibson, 543 P.2d 406, 408 n. 3, (Alaska 1975); State v. Marathon Oil Co., 528 P.2d 293, 295 n. 6, (Alaska 1974), and, until today, we have never suggested that Browder is in any way inconsistent with Keep.
I also take issue with the majority’s reasoning in two further respects. First, the majority states that when the legislature enacted AS 22.07.020(d)(2) in 1980 it had an analogous federal statute before it. This statement is wrong except in the rather meaningless sense that the legislature had the federal statute available for reference. The legislature also could have looked at a statute of any other state concerning the prosecution’s right to appeal, but there is no evidence that it did, just as there is no evidence that the legislature actually considered the federal statute. What the legislature clearly did was to consider the Alaska statutes which had been interpreted by this court and from which the language of AS 22.07.020(d)(2) was copied.
Second, the majority opines that the construction of AS 22.07.020(d)(2) given by the court of appeals would render that subsection superfluous as no more than a restatement of the constitutional prohibition against double jeopardy. However, as we have established, from an historical perspective this statement is wrong. The purpose of statutes like that involved here was to allow the state to appeal. Without an express statutory grant of the right to appeal, the traditional view has been that the State may not appeal in a criminal case.3
In summary, the decision of the court of appeals in this case and in Michel is consistent with the historical purpose of the statute in question; is consistent with Shelton and Keep; and is consistent with the rule that when a legislature copies language which has been judicially interpreted, that interpretation is presumed to be what the legislature intended. By contrast, the reasoning of the majority opinion is in conflict with the historical purpose of the language in question; is inconsistent with Shelton; requires that the holding of Keep be overruled; fails to deal with the holding of Keep on its own merits, but takes the unjustified position that Keep has already been overruled; and ignores the *397rule of construction that reenacted language carries with it the meaning imparted by prior published judicial decisions. For these reasons I agree with the court of appeals and disagree with the majority opinion.

. Former AS 22.05.010 provided in relevant part: "the State shall have no right of appeal in criminal cases, except to test the sufficiency of the indictment or information."

. AS 22.10.020(a) provides in relevant part: "[t]he State has no right to appeal in criminal cases, except to test the sufficiency of an indictment or information...."

. Further, superfluity in the sense of statutory repetition of a constitutional prohibition is surely one of the most minor of sins of a legislative draftsman. For example, the federal statute, 18 U.S.C. § 3731 (as amended 1971), cited by the majority as a model, (at-) is guilty of superfluity. ["... no appeal shall lie when the double jeopardy clause of the United States Constitution prohibits further prosecution.”]