Court Opinion

ID: 9855517
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 06:26:43.783696+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:36:06.891254
License: Public Domain

SINGLETON, Judge,
concurring.
I agree with the majority’s treatment of most of the issues. I am troubled, however, by the sentence in this case.
Kiven Collins was convicted of four counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted murder. The maximum sentence for murder in the first degree is ninety-nine years. AS 12.55.125(a). Collins received the maximum sentences allowable for the first-degree murder convictions. All were to run consecutively for a total of three hundred and ninety-six years. He also received a presumptive consecutive seven-year sentence for the attempted murder charge. Thus, Collins received a composite sentence of 403 years. While this sentence finds some support in Nukapigak v. State, 663 P.2d 943, 945-46 (Alaska 1983), Hastings v. State, 736 P.2d 1157, 1160 (Alaska App.1987), and Krukoff v. State, 702 P.2d 664, 666 (Alaska App.1985), this support is substantially undermined by Jackson v. State, 616 P.2d 23, 25 (Alaska 1980).
In Jackson, the supreme court considered whether a trial court could appropriately impose an unusually severe sentence as a means of restricting a person’s parole eligibility. The court held that parole considerations are not irrelevant in fashioning a sentence. However, the court expressed concern that speculation about parole might result in an excessive sentence. 616 P.2d at 25-26. The court therefore concluded:
We believe the correct approach is for the sentencing judge to impose an appropriate term of incarceration, considering the Chaney criteria [State v. Chaney, 477 P.2d 441 (Alaska 1970)], on the assumption that the entire term may be served. The court may then, in its discretion, designate a parole eligibility period greater than the statutory minimum, and should articulate on the record its reasons for doing so.
Id. at 25 (footnotes omitted).
Collins was twenty-six years old at the time he was sentenced. A twenty-six-year-old man has a life expectancy of approximately forty-four years. See American Council of Life Insurance, Life Insurance Fact Book at 92-93 (1984). Collins will not serve 403 years. This unusually long sentence was imposed simply to ensure that he would not be eligible for parole during the remainder of his life. His sentence is thus a life sentence without possibility of parole. In light of Jackson, the trial court should simply have imposed a ninety-nine-year sentence and, if appropriate, restricted Collins’ parole. Such a restriction should then have been justified on the record. See Newell v. State, 771 P.2d 873, 876-77 (Alaska App.1989) (discussing limitations on parole); Lawrence v. State, 764 P.2d 318, 321-22 (Alaska App.1988); Qualle v. State, 652 P.2d 481, 486 (Alaska App.1982); *1177Spencer v. State, 642 P.2d 1371, 1377-78 (Alaska App.1982).
I realize that the supreme court in Nuka-pigak seems to treat multiple consecutive life sentences and life sentences without possibility of parole as synonymous and therefore optional with the trial court. It seems to me, however, that permitting multiple life sentences that no one could ever possibly serve simply encourages trial judges to sentence based upon passion and prejudice and not upon a reasonable evaluation of the risk a given defendant poses to the community if paroled. If parole is not further restricted, AS 12.55.115, a person receiving a ninety-nine-year sentence must serve thirty-three years (one-third of the sentence) before becoming eligible for parole. AS 33.16.100(d). Thus, at the earliest Collins could be released, if we disregard the possibility that good time computation might affect parole eligibility, he would be over fifty-nine years old. By requiring the trial judge to specifically consider parole eligibility, as Jackson necessitates, we encourage dispassionate sentencing. If the trial judge had a basis for concluding that Collins will still be so dangerous after reaching the age of fifty-nine that the parole authorities should not be able to release him no matter what the contemporary facts disclose, then the trial court should have set out that basis on the record. I would therefore disapprove of the practice of pyramiding life sentences. To the extent Nukapigak is to the contrary, I would find that it conflicts with Jackson,1
I concur in the judgment because I believe the trial court in this case did make the necessary findings to warrant a sentence of life imprisonment without possibility of parole. I reach this result with some reluctance because Collins is a first felony offender who has never been imprisoned for a significant period of time. He has never been tested on parole. See Lawrence, 764 P.2d at 321-22. On the other hand, this court has had no hesitancy in affirming life sentences for juveniles convicted of single murders despite the absence of any evidence regarding their potential for rehabilitation. See Ridgely v. State, 739 P.2d 1299, 1302 (Alaska App. 1987); Riley v. State, 720 P.2d 951, 952-53 (Alaska App.1986). If ninety-nine years is an appropriate sentence for a juvenile convicted of a single first-degree murder, then ninety-nine years without possibility of parole is not clearly mistaken for someone convicted of multiple first-degree murders regardless of other considerations. This is what I understand Hastings to hold and it would appear that Hastings would govern this case as well.2 See Hastings, 736 P.2d at 1160.
I am further of the view that the record in this case would support such a sentence. See, e.g., Neal v. State, 628 P.2d 19, 21 (Alaska 1981) (dispensing with the requirement of specific fact-findings under circum*1178stances where record indicates defendant’s propensity for future criminal conduct), Given that Collins remorselessly killed four individuals and given the absence of anything in the record to suggest a potential for rehabilitation, I would not expect that a remand in this case for further fact-findings would make any difference in the re-suit.

. In Pears v. State, 698 P.2d 1198, 1204-05 (Alaska 1985), the plurality seemed to conclude that even in cases of reckless murder, sentences of ten years or less would serve the goals of rehabilitation, deterrence, and reaffirmation of community norms, leaving only a need for isolation to justify a longer sentence.
Reading all of the cases together, this court and the supreme court may be willing to permit a sentence of ninety-nine years for a planned first-degree murder without necessarily requiring a finding of a need for isolation. Nevertheless, to go beyond a sentence of ninety-nine years should require a finding of a need for isolation. Such a finding would be the equivalent of the finding needed to restrict parole required by Jackson.

. A defendant who has a history of violence and then commits multiple first-degree murders clearly qualifies for a sentence of life without possibility of parole. See Krukoff v. State, 702 P.2d at 666. A first offender presents a more difficult case but Hastings seems to compel af-firmance. Hastings killed six people while Collins killed four. Hastings engaged in more bizarre behavior. Nevertheless, this court emphasized the number of victims and the planning of the murders when it affirmed Hastings’ sentence. Hastings, 736 P.2d at 1160. Applying this standard to Collins’ conduct supports an affirmance of Collins’ sentence because Collins, like Hastings, apparently planned multiple killings. The fact that Hastings killed two more people than Collins did would not appear significant to the analysis in the Hastings decision.