Court Opinion

ID: 9550360
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 18:34:30.137825+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:21:27.318386
License: Public Domain

MATTHEWS, Justice,
dissenting.
First, I share Justice Burke’s belief that the fact that there were two rather than three victims would make no difference in the court’s sentence as to Count I, on which the seven year concurrent sentence was imposed.
Second, I think the majority’s application of the attempt statute, AS 11.05.020, to the ten-year minimum statute, AS 11.15.295, is incorrect. The ten-year minimum statute only applies to certain enumerated crimes. Attempts are not among them.1 Since criminal statutes should be strictly construed and in case of ambiguity, which the majority acknowledges to exist here, the narrower reading is to be preferred, Bell v. United States, 349 U.S. 81, 75 S.Ct. 620, 99 L.Ed. 905 (1955), I think it is wrong for the court to tack attempts on to the list of crimes expressed in section 295. It is certainly inconsistent to do so while giving lip service to the maxim “which favors a milder penalty over a harsher one when there is ambiguity or doubt concerning the severity of the penalty prescribed,” for the effect is quite the opposite. Under the majority’s construction, attempted robbery with a firearm carries a maximum sentence of seven and one-half years and a minimum of five years, whereas if section 295 were construed not to include attempts the sentencing range would be seven and one-half years maximum and six months minimum. The disparity is magnified for second and subsequent convictions which under the majority’s reasoning will carry a twelve and one-half year sentence both as a maximum and a mandatory minimum, while under a narrower and more literal reading of the statute the sentencing range would remain unchanged.
Third, I do not think the trial judge failed to consider Brookins’ potential for rehabilitation. Judge Hodges was aware of those factors which could be counted in Brookins’ favor mentioned by the majority opinion and he expressly referred to them. He believed, however, that the sentencing goals of deterrence, isolation of the offender and reaffirmation of societal norms justified the sentence. In this I do not think he was mistaken.
I would therefore affirm the sentence.

. Also not included are a few other crimes involving violence against the person of another such as manslaughter, AS 11.15.040 and mayhem, AS 11.15.140. A wide gulf of non-coverage is not created by the omission of attempts or these other crimes of violence because an assault is among the enumerated crimes, and an assault will nearly always be committed where a firearm is used or carried as a part of any attempted, or completed, crime of violence against a person.