Court Opinion

ID: 9797574
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 04:24:29.373184+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:57:16.496823
License: Public Domain

*366BRYNER, Chief Justice,
with whom CARPENETI, Justice, joins except with regard to the last paragraph, concurring.
I agree with the court’s decision but have reservations concerning three points addressed in its opinion.
First, I do not believe that it is necessary to overrule any aspect of Neakok1 in this case. Because any decision that overturns precedent necessarily erodes the values of stare decisis, I would use this extraordinary power only upon a compelling showing that its use is necessary and only when the point of law to be disavowed is squarely at issue.
As we have consistently recognized in the past, “a party raising a claim controlled by an existing decision bears a heavy threshold burden of showing compelling reasons for reconsidering the prior ruling: “We will overrule a prior decision only when clearly convinced that the rule was originally erroneous or is no longer sound because of changed conditions, and that more good than harm would result from a departure from precedent.’ ”2 Here, the state has failed to meet this burden.3 Although it insists that Neak-ok was wrongly decided, the state cites no statistical, experiential, or authoritative evidence to support this contention. It simply reargues the points considered in Neakok in hopes that the current court will disagree with the decision. This is precisely what the rule of stare decisis seeks to prevent: “The stare decisis doctrine rests on a solid bedrock of practicality: ‘no judicial system could do society’s work if it eyed each issue afresh in every case that raised it.’ ” 4
Moreover, the point overturned by the court is not squarely raised here. The opinion overrules Neakok’s statement that “[fjor-mulation of [a] parole plan, and selection of special [parole] conditions”5 are non-immune operational functions.6 As set out in Neakok, this ruling addressed only a prison counsel- or’s task of establishing a parole plan and a parole officer’s authority to set special conditions of parole. Neither of these functions is at issue here.7
*367The court nevertheless holds that Neakok’s ruling on this point must be overturned to prevent it from applying to the parole board.8 Yet Neakok expressly declined to extend its immunity ruling to the parole board or its members, emphasizing that parole boards “have frequently been afforded quasi-judicial immunity from liability for their decisions.”9 Since, by its own terms, Neakok did not apply this aspect of its ruling to the parole board’s functions, there is no need to overturn the ruling in addressing the parole board’s immunity here. Although the court may have well-founded concerns that Neak-ok’s ruling might be extended to parole board functions in future cases, there is no need to overrule Neakok to resolve these concerns: the court can simply hold that Neakok’s immunity ruling does not extend to the parole board.
My second reservation about today’s opinion concerns its discussion of a parole officer’s discretionary function immunity. In my view, the court’s carefully targeted narrowing of Neakok’s broad language discussing the scope of a parole officer’s actionable duty leaves little need to further limit or refine our already well-defined law addressing discretionary function immunity. In this respect, while I certainly agree with the court’s view that a mandatory DOC policy provides a sufficient basis for declaring a parole officer’s function to be operational, I am concerned that the opinion might be read to say the converse, as well — that a non-mandatory policy necessarily suffices to establish a policy planning function.
I do not read the opinion as so holding. The court correctly recognizes that a DOC policy conferring discretion on parole officers may often prove determinative by signaling that the described function actually involves policy and planning. But a rule intractably declaring that all non-mandatory policies describe functions that are automatically shielded would run counter to our well-settled case law10 and could lead to anomalous results.11
My last reservation about today’s opinion concerns its observation addressing the companion case, C.J. v. State.12 Specifically, applying the narrowed duty analysis adopted here to C.J., the court states that in C.J. “it was foreseeable that if not properly supervised, the offender, a convicted rapist, might rape a woman in the community into which he was released.”13 Although I have no doubt that this risk was foreseeable, I would hesitate to conclude that the entire population of a city like Anchorage constitutes a sufficiently identifiable “victim class” for purposes of establishing an actionable duty under Neakok. To the extent that the court’s observation suggests otherwise, I would rely on the concurring view I express on this point in C. J.14

. State, Div. of Corr. v. Neakok, 721 P.2d 1121 (Alaska 1986).

. Thomas v. Anchorage Equal Rights Comm’n, 102 P.3d 937, 943 (Alaska 2004) (quoting State, Commercial Fisheries Entry Comm’n v. Carlson, 65 P.3d 851, 859 (Alaska 2003) (internal quotations omitted)).

. In his dissenting opinion, Justice Matthews cites parole statistics from a recent multi-state study by the Urban Institute — Amy Solomon, Vera Kachnowski & Avinash Bhati, Does Parole Work? (Urban Institute, March 2005) (hereinafter "study”) — as a basis to argue that Neakok should be overruled because statistical evidence now disproves Neakok’s main premise — that parole officers have a "substantial ability to control the parolee.” Dissent at 370. But the study’s statistics do not support the dissent’s theory. The study — which, incidentally, excluded Alaska— compiled data from fifteen different systems without taking into account variations potentially attributable to funding, staffing, training, or types of supervision within or among the systems studied. Based on these statistics, the study merely compared rearrest rates for prisoners released with and without supervision in the selected locations. As its title suggests, the study was designed as a descriptive measure, not a predictive one: it merely asked "Does Parole Work” as it currently exists — not "Could Parole Work" in a better-run system. Moreover, because the study did not consider whether the states it studied imposed civil liability for negligent parole supervision, its findings shed no light on whether or how civil liability might affect parole officers’ supervision of their parolees. Last, and most notably, the authors of the study expressly acknowledged these limitations, warning the study’s readers that its statistical findings could not support sweeping generalizations like the dissent malees here:
It bears repeating that the nature of our analysis does not allow for insights into whether certain types of supervision, such as neighborhood-based or case management models, are more effective than others or whether there are differences in outcomes across states. It is also unclear how much rearrest outcomes are the result of policy directives (e.g., a decision to watch more closely and arrest more quickly) and not criminal activity alone. Study at 15.

. Thomas, 102 P.3d at 943 (quoting Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833, 854, 112 S.Ct. 2791, 120 L.Ed.2d 674 (1992)).

. Neakok, 721 P.2d at 1134.

. Maj. Op. at 360.

. There is no hint of any claim against prison counselors here, nor is there any claim that McGrew’s parole officer, Beckner, had any authority to set special conditions of parole. Notably, under current law, parole officers have no authority to set special conditions of parole un*367less the authority has been actually delegated by the parole board or a board member. AS 33.16.150(c).

. Maj. Op. at 360.

. Neakok, 721 P.2d at 1133 n. 19 (citations omitted).

. See, e.g., State v. Abbott, 498 P.2d 712, 720-22 (Alaska 1972).

. Specifically, a rule that inflexibly viewed all non-mandatory policies as describing immunized functions would leave the department in charge of its own immunity by allowing it to make all policies non-mandatory, thereby converting all functions performed by parole officers, "even driving a nail," id., into planning and policy decisions.

. C.J. v. State, Dep’t of Corr., 151 P.3d 373, 2006 WL 3692501, Op. No. 6081 (Alaska, December 15, 2006).

. Maj. Op. at 363-64.

. C.J., 151 P.3d at 384-85.