Court Opinion

ID: 9567404
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 19:53:32.219185+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T10:00:35.735856
License: Public Domain

SINGLETON, Judge,
concurring.
While I agree with the result reached by the majority, I fear that the approach taken unduly dignifies Ms. Oyoghok’s constitutional arguments, and in so doing, obscures the issue in this case.
A probationer has a statutory and common law right to be free of any condition of probation not reasonably related to her rehabilitation. Tiedeman v. State, 576 P.2d 114, 116 (Alaska 1978). To the extent that a condition is unnecessarily severe or restrictive, it violates the Tiedeman rule. By the same token, to effectively aid in rehabilitation, a condition of probation must be intelligible; Ms. Oyoghok cannot be expected to follow a condition of probation she cannot understand.
I believe these principles dispose of this case. Given the majority’s treatment of Ms. Oyoghok’s complaints, it is clear that in any case in which the court would invalidate a probation condition on the basis of one of her constitutional claims, it would as readily invalidate the condition under the Tiedeman rule. Conversely, so long as the condition of probation was reasonably necessary for rehabilitation, it would not be invalidated on the basis of any of Ms. Oyo-ghok’s constitutional complaints. This is not to say that a reasonably necessary probation condition could not violate some provision of the state or federal constitution; it is only to say that it could not, under the majority’s analysis, violate the constitutional provisions relied upon by Ms. Oyoghok.
For this reason, I do not agree with the implication in the majority opinion that some probation conditions might be unconstitutionally overbroad. “Overbreadth” is a term of art that the United States Supreme Court uses to explain an exception to the general rule that only a person whose constitutional rights are violated by a statute has standing to challenge the constitutional validity of that statute. The Supreme Court explained why it established such an exception in Broadrick v. Oklahoma, 413 U.S. 601, 612, 93 S.Ct. 2908, 2915, 37 L.Ed.2d 830, 840-41 (1973), where the court said:
Litigants . . . are permitted to challenge a statute not because their own rights of free expression are violated, but because of a judicial prediction or assumption that the statute’s very existence may cause others not before the court to refrain from constitutionally protected speech or association.
By its nature, a probation condition affects only the named probationer, and she has a substantial incentive to seek clarification of uncertain conditions and modifications of unnecessarily severe conditions at the time they are imposed. Hence, there is no justification for an overbreadth doctrine regarding probation conditions. A probationer should not be given standing to question the propriety of a probation condition as it might be applied to someone other than herself.
By the same token, the claim that a probation condition violates a constitutional right to intrastate, or in this case intracity travel, is untenable. Execution aside, there is no greater restriction on travel than imprisonment. If violation of a law could, consistent with the constitution, result in imprisonment, it can constitutionally result in restrictions on movement less severe. If such a condition is invalid, it is because it is not reasonably necessary to effectuate rehabilitation, not because it infringes on intrastate travel.