Court Opinion

ID: 9551166
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 18:48:38.402458+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:23:12.354251
License: Public Domain

CONNOR, Justice
(dissenting).
In my opinion the judgment of acquittal should have been granted.
*1079In Judd v. State, 482 P.2d 273, 280 (Alaska 1971), this Court held that,
“Where the facts of a case show knowing possession of illegal drugs, it is unnecessary that a usable quantity be found so long as a sufficient quantity of the drug is found to permit proper identification.”
I joined the majority in Judd because the circumstantial evidence in that case proved overwhelmingly that the defendant had recent and knowing possession of the prohibited drug. See 482 P.2d at 279 n. 14. By contrast, the facts of this case are quite different.
Here the evidence shows only that the defendant possessed a balloon with a powdery material in it. The chemist who analyzed the powdery material concluded that it contained heroin. He did not weigh the powder in the balloon, finding it insufficient to be weighed. He did estimate, however, that the amount of power would have been less than one milligram.
The question in such cases is not whether a usable quantity of the drug is found. Rather it is whether the prohibited substance is present in such form and amount that knowledge of its presence can fairly be imputed to the one charged with possession. People v. Aguilar, 223 Cal.App.2d 119, 35 Cal.Rptr. 516 (1963). Small and unusable traces, together with other evidence, may well suffice to support a conviction. That was the case in Judd v. State, supra. But a forensic chemist’s isolating- merely an immeasurable trace of the material in articles possessed by the defendant should not ipso facto support a conviction.
As laboratory techniques improve, it will undoubtedly become possible to detect the presence of a substance from increasingly small amounts of sample material. In the case at bar the sample material was estimated at less than one milligram. One milligram is approximately l/28,571ths of an ounce or, expressed decimally, about .000035 ounces. The evidence adduced at trial did not reveal even how much of this sample material was heroin and how much was some other substance.
At some point a line must be drawn. I do not believe that from evidence such as this we can reasonably infer that the defendant had awareness or knowledge of the presence of a narcotic drug within the balloon found in his possession.
Accordingly, I would reverse the conviction.