Court Opinion

ID: 9532347
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 04:20:35.361352+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:28:44.741649
License: Public Domain

RABINOWITZ, Justice
(concurring).
I have geminous reservations as to whether this court possesses the authority to decree, or as a matter of policy should hold, that a constitutional decision in a criminal case need not be given retroactive application. It is difficult to perceive how adoption of a prospective only technique can be *281squared with Alaska’s constitutional declaration, found in article I, section 1, “that all persons are equal and entitled to equal rights, opportunities, and protection under the law. * * * ” The Draconian characteristics of prospective application of adjudications in the area of individual constitutional rights in criminal cases is sharply illuminated in the case at bar.
But for the government’s loss of an important file which it was ordered to produce at appellant Judd’s first trial in April 1969, in all probability Judd’s appeal would have been pending at the time the Supreme Court of the United States rendered its decision in Chimel.1 In Fresneda we held Chimel applicable to all cases pending on direct review in this court as of the date of the Chimel decision.2 In all fairness to appellant, I think Chimel should govern the disputed search and seizure in this case. For here it was the government’s dereliction which triggered the trial court’s declaration of a mistrial at appellant’s first trial. Although I concur in the court’s holding that under Muller reprosecution of Judd was not violative of either Alaska’s or the Constitution of the United States’ proscriptions against double jeopardy, I believe it unfair to place appellant beyond the protective emanations of Chimel where the state’s own actions fortuitously prevented appellant’s case from attaining pending-on-appeal-status at the time Chimel was decided.3
I find I am also in disagreement with a further facet of the court’s opinion. The validity of the search and seizure issue appears to have been decided as if section 14 of article I of the Alaska Constitution was nonexistent.4 Seemingly overlooked are Roberts v. State, 458 P.2d 340, 342 (Alaska 1969); Glasgow v. State, 469 P.2d 682, 686 (Alaska 1970); and Baker v. City of Fairbanks, 471 P.2d 386, 401-402 (Alaska 1970). These decisions explained this court’s duties regarding interpretations of Alaska’s Constitutional provisions. In Roberts, we said :
We are not bound in expounding the Alaska Constitution’s Declaration of Rights by the decisions of the United *282States Supreme Court, past or future, which expound identical or closely similar provisions of the United States Constitution.
In the Baker case, we reiterated the position taken in Roberts, and further stated:
While we must enforce the minimum constitutional standards imposed upon us by the United States Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment, we are free, and we are under a duty, to develop additional constitutional rights and privileges under our Alaska Constitution if we find such fundamental rights and privileges to be within the intention and spirit of our local constitutional language and to be necessary for the kind of civilized life and ordered liberty which is at the core of our constitutional heritage. We need not stand by idly and passively, waiting for constitutional direction from the highest court of the land.
Instead, we should be moving concurrently to develop and expound the principles embedded in our constitutional law. (footnotes omitted).
Fresneda v. State, 458 P.2d 134, 138-143 (Alaska 1969), contains both a clear exposition of the historical struggle which gave birth to the Fourth Amendment as well as a cogent explanation as to why adherence to the constructive possession rationale of Harris v. United States, 331 U.S. 145, 67 S. Ct. 1098, 91 L.Ed. 1399 (1947), and to United States v. Rabinowitz, 339 U.S. 56, 70 S.Ct. 430, 94 L.Ed. 653 (1950), would result in virtual repeals of the Fourth Amendment and article I, section 14 of the Alaska Constitution.5 Here the police acting without a search warrant, conducted an extensive and prolonged search of three rooms of appellant’s apartment in conjunction with their arrest of appellant. Guided by the teachings of Baker, Roberts and Fresneda’s analyses of the constitutional protections against unreasonable searches and seizures, I conclude that the over-broad, intensive search which led to the seizure of the contents of the allspice bottle exceeded the permissible bounds of a warrantless search under article I, section 14 of the Alaska Constitution. The happenstance that a large number of items of narcotics paraphernalia were in plain view cannot furnish legal justification for the duration and scope of the intensive war-rantless search which was conducted. Here the arresting officers had ample probable cause to obtain a search warrant and could have, without difficulty, secured the premises in the interim.
Despite the foregoing, I find I can concur in the result reached by the court. Assuming the applicability of Chimel or the invalidity of the search and seizure of the allspice bottle under Alaska’s Constitution, or both, the police properly seized numerous other items of narcotics paraphernalia which were strewn about appellant’s apartment in plain view. Many of these items were found to contain traces of heroin. Such evidence, in my view, afforded a solid evidentiary basis for the jury’s determination that appellant knowingly possessed heroin. Study of the entire record has left me with the conviction that introduction of the allspice bottle’s contents into evidence was harmless error under both Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18, 24, 87 S.Ct. 824, 17 L.Ed.2d 705, 710-711 (1967), as modified by Harrington v. California, 395 U.S. 250, 89 S.Ct. 1726, 23 L.Ed.2d 284 (1969) and the harmless error test this court articulated in Love v. *283State, 457 P.2d 622, 634 (Alaska 1969) more particularly “that the error did not appreciably affect the jury’s verdict.”6
In reaching this conclusion, I am persuaded that under Alaska’s Narcotic Drug Act it is not necessary that the prosecution prove that a measurable or useable quantity was found in order to obtain conviction for unlawful possession of a particular drug. This is not to say that possession of an unuseable trace, or residual debris, in and of itself is sufficient to warrant conviction. The quantity of narcotics found is relevant circumstantial evidence, however, the totality of the evidence must be such as to show beyond a reasonable doubt, a knowing possession of a useable quantity of a prohibited drug. See Justice Herndon’s concurring opinion in People v. Sullivan, 234 Cal.App.2d 562, 44 Cal.Rptr. 524, 526-530 (1965).
I concur with the court’s disposition of all other issues in this appeal.

. Prior to the commencement of his first trial, Judd moved to suppress the contents of the allspice bottle. After conducting a lengthy suppression hearing, the trial court denied Judd’s motion.

. Fresneda v. State, 458 P.2d 134, 143 n. 28 (Alaska 1969). Fresneda is this court’s only decision concerning the subject of retroactivity involving constitutional rights in criminal cases. In Gray v. State, 463 P.2d 897, 913 (Alaska 1970), prospective application was given to our decision in Speidel v. State, 460 P.2d 77, 84 n. 27 (Alaska 1969), regarding the right of an accused to be present at presentence conferences. Our decision in Speidel was based on non-constitutional grounds.

. It appears that the court’s rationale for ■ its refusal to accord GMmel full retroactive application possibly signals a resurrection of expediency oriented decision making, a technique which was emphatically rejected in Baker v. City of Fairbanks, 471 P.2d 386, 394 (Alaska 1970). There the applicability of Alaska’s constitutional provision guaranteeing jury trials to misdemeanor cases was considered against the potential costs of governmental implementation. In Baker, we said:
The argument from expediency contains inherent defects. If an individual right is vested by the Constitution, the overriding demands of governmental ef-ficency must be of a compelling nature and must be identifiable as flowing from some enumerated constitutional power. To allow expediency to be the basic principle would place the individual constitutional right in a secondary position, to be effectuated only if it accorded with expediency.
This would negate our entire theory of constitutional government. The American constitutional theory is that constitutions are a restraining force against the abuse of governmental power, not that individual rights are a matter of governmental sufferance, (footnote omitted).

.Art. I, § 14 of the Alaska Const, reads:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses and other property, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated. No warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

. Assuming reliance to be the controlling criterion regarding prospective or retroactive application of constitutional adjudications of search and seizure | questions, there were no decisions of this court at the time the questioned search ’took place which sanctioned a search as broad as the one carried out in the case at bar. See Weltz v. State, 431 P.2d 502 (Alaska 1967) ; Merrill v. State, 423 P.2d 686 (Alaska 1967) ; Goss v. State, 390 P.2d 220 (Alaska 1964) ; Ellison v. State, 383 P.2d 716 (Alaska 1963) ; Brown v. State, 372 P.2d 785 (Alaska 1962). Compare Knudsen v. City of Anchorage, 358 P.2d 375, 379 (Alaska 1960).

. Swaim, Alaska’s Criminal Harmless — Error Rule: Love v. State, 457 P.2d 622 (August 8, 1969), 8 Alaska Law Journal 215 (1970).