Court Opinion

ID: 9553080
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 19:21:45.469315+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:29:39.316875
License: Public Domain

BRYNER, Chief Judge,
dissenting.
Upon reflection, I am unable to agree with the majority’s decision to create an affirmative defense of reasonable mistake of law. In light of the revised criminal code’s treatment of defenses and affirmative defenses, AS 11.81.300-640, and in light of the express provisions of AS 11.81.-620(a) and the legislative history of that statutory provision I think it reasonably clear that the legislature rejected mistake of law as a defense to criminal responsibility. The majority’s decision to create such a defense is therefore unsound.1
Moreover, the defense created by the majority is unnecessary: it is a cumbersome and potentially confusing general rule adopted solely to dispose of the specific problem in this case. The problem is susceptible of a far more limited cure.
The crucial facts here are not disputed. Ostrosky challenged the constitutional validity of the limited entry permit system and won in the superior court. The state could have moved immediately for a stay pending appeal but did not. Having personally obtained a favorable judgment from a court of general jurisdiction in a case in which he was himself the plaintiff,2 and no stay pending appeal having been sought by the state, Ostrosky resumed fishing. No prior Alaska judicial decision addressed the question whether, under the circumstances, Ostrosky was legally entitled to rely on the superior court’s ruling.
*794It seems clear from the record that the Office of the Attorney General initially believed Ostrosky was entitled to fish unless a stay was issued. The state so represented in the motion for a stay that it filed with the supreme court after realizing that Os-trosky had resumed fishing. Similarly, the supreme court justice who granted the state’s motion for a stay apparently believed a stay was necessary to prevent Os-trosky from relying on the superior court ruling. To hold that Ostrosky could subsequently be prosecuted for sharing this same view seems, under the circumstances, preposterous. I would, accordingly, simply hold that in the peculiar factual setting of this case, it would be fundamentally unfair, and violative of the Alaska Constitution’s guarantee of due process,3 to permit Ostro-sky to be convicted for a limited entry violation committed after the superior court’s ruling but before issuance of the stay pending appeal.
Since I believe Ostrosky’s conviction must be reversed and the prosecution dismissed as a matter of law, I dissent.

. In any event, if a reasonable mistake of law defense is to be created, I see no justification whatsoever for taking the factual issues involved in that defense away from the jury. There is nothing in the Model Penal Code to suggest that the defense should not be decided by the jury. See A.L.I., Model Penal Code §§ 1.12, 2.04(3) and (4) (Proposed Official Draft 1962); compare Model Penal Code § 2.04(4) (Tentative Draft No. 4, 1955). Nor has the majority found any other jurisdiction permitting a defense of reasonable mistake of law to be raised but treating it as an issue exclusively for the court.
The reasonableness of a defendant’s beliefs as to surrounding circumstances is a question resolved by juries in numerous and varied contexts. To suggest that the issue should be taken from the jury in this situation simply because it is potentially confusing betrays a profound mistrust of juries, which is both entirely unwarranted and fundamentally at odds with our traditional system of justice. See, e.g., Baker v. Fairbanks, 471 P.2d 386 (Alaska 1970). I perceive utterly no connection between the type of factual issues that the majority’s opinion in this case would remove from the jury’s consideration and the type of extrinsic policy considerations involved in the entrapment defense. See, e.g., Grossman v. State, 457 P.2d 226 (Alaska 1969).

. An integral part of my conclusion that this case can be resolved as sui generis is that Ostro-sky was a party in the litigation in which the judgment he relied on was rendered. I do not mean to suggest that, in the absence of a reasonable mistake of law defense, other individuals, who were not parties to Ostrosky’s action, would be on similar footing.

. Alaska Const., art. 1, § 7.