Court Opinion

ID: 9797835
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 04:30:14.738568+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:58:29.413486
License: Public Domain

MANNHEIMER, Judge,
concurring.
Demers embezzled money from the Alaska Folk Festival and, as part of his sentence, he was ordered to pay restitution to the Folk Festival for the money he stole. The question in this case is whether the sentencing court was authorized to order Demers to pay an additional $5000 in restitution to the Folk Festival for the value of labor donated by two of its board members who volunteered their time to reconstruct the Folk Festival's financial records, thus allowing the Folk Festival to ascertain the amount of Demers's embezzlement.
A court's sentencing powers are defined by the legislature.1 The statutes at issue in this case are AS 12.55.045(a) (which authorizes a court to order restitution as a direct component of a sentence) and AS 12.55.100(2)@) (which authorizes a court to order restitution as a condition of probation).2 The question is whether the Alaska Legislature intended these statutes to authorize a sentencing court to order a defendant to reimburse a victim for the value of unpaid labor volunteered by other people who wish to assist the vietim in coping with the crime.
The aim of restitution is to restore victims to their financial condition before the crime. The problem in the present case is that the superior court has ordered "restitution" that makes the Folk Festival $5000 richer than it was before. Demers has been ordered (1) to repay the money he stole and (2) to pay $5000 for the labor donated by the two board members-labor that the Folk Festival did not have to pay for. Thus, if Demers satisfies both parts of the superior court's restitution order, the Folk Festival will end up with $5000 more than it possessed before Demers committed his theft.
If the Folk Festival had been insured against embezzlement, and if the insurance company had paid for an audit, no sentencing judge would order the defendant to "reimburse" the Folk Festival for the money spent by the insurance company. Similarly, if the insurance company had sent its own employees to reconstruct the Folk Festival's records to ascertain the amount of the theft, no sentencing judge would order the defendant to "reimburse" the Folk Festival for the labor performed by the insurance company's employees. The Folk Festival did not pay for this labor; it merely received the benefit of this labor. Ordering the defendant to pay "restitution" to the Folk Festival for the hours of work performed by the insurance company employees would result in the unjust enrichment of the Folk Festival.
The facts of the present case offer another example of the same situation. Two Folk Festival board members reconstructed the Folk Festival's records. The two board members were not employees of the Folk Festival, and they did not charge the Folk Festival for their time. The Folk Festival received the benefit of their labor but incurred no expense. Under these circumstances, the Folk Festival received a windfall when the superior court ordered Demers to "reimburse" the Folk Festival for the hours of labor donated by the two board members.
If anyone deserves to be compensated for the board members' labor, it is the board members themselves. Arguably, the superi- or court might simply amend its judgement and name the two board members as the recipients of the restitution. But I conclude that the legislature has not authorized sentencing courts to impose this type of restitution.
AS 12.55.045(a) declares that a sentencing court may order a defendant to pay restitution to three categories of people: (1) "to the victim", (2) to "[any] other person injured by the offense", and (8) "to a public; private, or private nonprofit organization that has provided or ... will be providing counseling, medical, or shelter services to the victim or *4[any] other person injured by the offense". The Folk Festival board members are not themselves the victims of Demers's embezzlement, nor are they "a public, private, or private nonprofit organization that has provided or ... will be providing counseling, medical, or shelter services to the victim or [any] other person injured by the offense". So if the board members are to be deemed proper recipients of restitution, they must qualify as "other person[s] injured by the offense".
The only sense in which the two board members were "injured" by Demers's crime is that they felt duty-bound to conserve the limited financial resources of the Folk Festival by devoting their own time and energy to the reconstruction of the Folk Festival's financial records. And, indeed, this is the "injury" that the sentencing judge ordered Demers to reimburse. But I conclude that the legislature did not intend the phrase "injured by the offense" to be interpreted in so broad a fashion.
AS 12.55.045(a) must be interpreted in light of its companion provision, AS 12.55.100(a)(2), the statute which authorizes a sentencing court to impose restitution as a condition of probation. AS 12.55.100(a)(2) declares that a sentencing court can order a probationer to "make restitution or reparation to aggrieved parties for actual damages or loss caused by the [probationer's] crime". Because AS 12.55.045(a) and AS 12.55.100(a) appear to be designed to give sentencing courts two different methods of achieving the same goal, they should be construed in part materia. That is, we should presume that the legislature intended the phrase "person[s] injured by the offense" to mean the same thing as the phrase "aggrieved parties [who have suffered] actual damages or loss".
One could argue that volunteers who come to the aid of a victim, and who thereby spare the victim identifiable and measurable financial expense, should be compensated for their time and trouble. Indeed, if I were writing on a clean slate, free to adopt whatever rule I thought best, there is much to commend the position taken by Judge Collins (the sentencing judge) and by my dissenting colleague, Judge Coats. But I conclude that such an interpretation of AS 12.55 .045(a) and AS 12.55.100(a) would expand restitution beyond the seope envisioned by the legislature. It would seemingly authorize a sentencing judge to order a defendant to pay restitution at an hourly rate to relatives, friends, and neighbors of a crime victim who spend time consoling the victim, or who help clean up the victim's house after a burglary or an assault, or who do the shopping or cooking for a victim who is too distraught to attend to these tasks.
Based on the wording of AS 12.55.045(a) and AS 12.55.100(a), I conclude that our legislature did not intend to authorize a sentencing court to order a defendant to reimburse people who volunteer their labor to alleviate or mitigate the effects of the defendant's crime. Accordingly, I join Judge Stewart in reversing the award of $5000 restitution for the labor of the two Folk Festival board members.

. See R.I. v. State, 894 P.2d 683, 685 (Alaska App.1995).

. - Shortly after Demers committed his crime, the legislature amended AS 12.55.045 so that any duty of restitution imposed as a direct component of the defendant's sentence automatically becomes a condition of the defendant's probation. See AS 12.55.045(), enacted in SLA 2000, ch. 103, § 4.