Court Opinion

ID: 9850234
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 04:53:51.03767+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:20:33.487191
License: Public Domain

SINGLETON, Judge,
concurring.
The sole issue presented by this case is the propriety of a jury instruction defining the mens rea applicable to the offense of driving with license suspended, adapted from AS 11.81.900(a)(4) (criminal negligence). In opposition, defendant vigorously argued that an instruction based upon AS 11.81.900(a)(3) (defining recklessness) should have been given. I agree with the majority that as between the two definitions, culpable negligence is more appropriate to a charge of driving with license suspended than is recklessness.
In reaching this conclusion, I see no reason to differentiate between “criminal negligence” as defined in AS 11.81.900(a)(4) and so-called “simple negligence” or “civil negligence,” which is not defined in the criminal code. I fear that the majority’s passing reference to such á distinction is more confusing than helpful and might encourage the abominable practice of telling jurors in criminal cases that they must find something “more than civil negligence” in order to find “criminal negligence,” without explaining the distinction between criminal and civil negligence, a distinction that most lawyers cannot articulate or agree upon and is therefore hardly helpful to a lay jury. The opinion in this case should not be read as authorizing any such elaboration on the definition in AS 11.81.-900(a)(4).1

. In St. John v. State, 715 P.2d 1205 (Alaska App.1986), and Abruska v. State, 705 P.2d 1261, 1270 n. 7 (Alaska App.1985), we roughly compared culpable negligence under the Model Penal Code and our Alaska Revised Code with so-called objective recklessness under the Restatement (Second) of Torts §§ 500-503 (1965). Assuming that the analogy is valid, the distinction between "simple negligence” and "culpable negligence” is a function of the extent to which the defendant’s • conduct creates risks of harm to others out of proportion to its utility. See Restatement (Second) of Torts § 282, comment e, § 500 comment g (1965). Cf. Id. at §§ 291-293. The distinction therefore has nothing to do with the extent to which the licensing statutes impose a duty upon a driver to know the status of his license. Cf. Restatement (Second) of Torts § 500 comment e (1965).