Court Opinion

ID: 9796257
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 03:52:57.780024+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:49:23.817610
License: Public Domain

MANNHEIMER, Judge,
concurring.
I agree with my colleagues that Judge Wolverton was not clearly erroneous when he rejected Lewandowski's contention that this robbery was among the least serious conduct included within the definition of first-degree robbery. However, I believe that this conclusion requires a fuller explanation than is contained in the majority opinion.
There are two reasons why Judge Wolver-ton could properly reject the proposed miti-gator. The first reason is that State v. Richards and Parks v. State are based on a misguided construction of the robbery statute.
Richards and Parks adhere to the view espoused by Judge Singleton in his concurring opinion in Richards-that the central rationale of the prohibition against robbery is to protect people against the infliction of injury. According to this view, the seriousness of any robbery should be gauged solely by assessing the degree of risk of injury actually created by the robber's conduct. Thus, in Richards this court (by a two-to-one vote) upheld a finding of mitigator (d)(9) when the defendant used an inoperable handgun. And in Parks this court concluded that the sentencing judge committed clear error by refusing to find mitigator (d)(9) when the defendant merely represented (falsely) that he was armed with a firearm.
I believe that this is an overly narrow view of the robbery statute. As defined by AS 11.41.510(a), robbery is the taking or attempted taking of property from the presence of the victim, accomplished by force or the immediate threat of force. The crime is, at heart, an aggravated species of assault-aggravated because the assault is motivated by the intent to seize property. As this court noted in Todd v. State,
It is true that the Alaska legislature now classifies robbery among the "offenses against the person" in chapter 41 of the criminal code, accentuating its assaultive aspect. Nevertheless, the theft aspect of robbery ean not be ignored. Both the common law and Alaska's criminal law ... have always treated the crime of robbery as more serious than the sum of its parts. Among assaults, those assaults motivated by theft have always been viewed as among the most serious, and the resulting crime of robbery has always been punished more severely than either assault or theft, or even the combination of both.
884 P.2d 668, 685 (Alaska App.1994).
I therefore believe that Judge Bryner was closer to the mark when, in his dissenting opinion in Richards, he described the rationale of the robbery statute as protecting people against assault and when he concluded that the seriousness of a robbery must be evaluated, at least in part, by the degree to which people were placed in apprehension of injury. Obviously, one measure of the seriousness of a robbery-indeed, the seriousness of any assault-is the degree to which people are actually endangered. But it is a mistake, I believe, to make this the only measure.
The second reason for upholding Judge Wolverton's decision is that, even under this court's decisions in Rickards and Parks, the facts of Lewandowski's case are not among the least serious when all of the civreum-stances are considered.
As just explained, Richards and Parks are based on the view that the seriousness of any robbery should be gauged by assessing the degree of risk of injury actually created by the robber's conduct. In Richards, this court ruled that a sentencing judge was justi-* fied in finding mitigator (d)(9) when the defendant used an inoperable handgun to threaten the robbery victims. Lewandowski argues that his case is at least as mitigated as Richards because he carried an inoperable *1224pellet gun-a weapon that does not qualify as a firearm under AS 11.81.900(b)(24).
But as Judge Wolverton pointed out, Le-wandowski's accomplice was armed with a steak knife and a hunting knife. These implements qualify as "deadly weapons" under AS 11.81.900(b)(15).1 The fact that Lewan-dowski's accomplice carried these knives was sufficient, by itself, to make Lewandowski's crime a first-degree robblery—for, under AS 11.41.500(a)(1), a robbery is of the first degree if "[the defendant] or another participant is armed with a deadly weapon".
- Thus, Lewandowski's crime would have been first-degree robbery even if Lewandow-ski had carried no weapon. For this reason, even if this case is analyzed under the rule adopted in Richards and Parks, Lewandow-ski's crime did not become a mitigated first-degree robbery just because Lewandowski brought along an extra weapon that did not contribute significantly to the actual risk of harm already posed by the robbers' conduct.
For both of these reasons, I conclude that we should uphold Judge Wolverton's rejection of proposed mitigator (d)(9).

. AS 11.81.900(b)(15) states that a "deadly weapon" is "any firearm, or anything designed for and capable of causing death or serious physical injury, including a knife, an axe, a club, metal knuckles, or an explosive". (Emphasis added)