Opinion
No. 5934
04-03-2013
CHARLES T. ALEXIE, Appellant, v. STATE OF ALASKA, Appellee.
Appearances: John N. Page III, Assistant Public Defender, and Quinlan Steiner, Public Defender, Anchorage, for the Appellant. Thomas J. Aliberti, Assistant District Attorney, Bethel, and John J. Burns, Attorney General, Juneau, for the Appellee.
NOTICE
Memorandum decisions of this court do not create legal precedent. See Alaska Appellate Rule 214(d) and Paragraph 7 of the Guidelines for Publication of Court of Appeals Decisions (Court of Appeals Order No. 3). Accordingly, this memorandum decision may not be cited as binding authority for any proposition of law.
Court of Appeals No. A-10808
Trial Court No. 4BE-10-337 CR
MEMORANDUM OPINION
Appeal from the District Court, Fourth Judicial District, Bethel, Leonard R. Devaney III, Judge.
Appearances: John N. Page III, Assistant Public Defender, and Quinlan Steiner, Public Defender, Anchorage, for the Appellant. Thomas J. Aliberti, Assistant District Attorney, Bethel, and John J. Burns, Attorney General, Juneau, for the Appellee.
Before: Coats, Chief Judge, and Mannheimer and Bolger, Judges.
Judge MANNHEIMER.
Charles T. Alexie appeals his conviction for resisting arrest, AS 11.56.-700(a). Alexie asserts that the evidence presented at his trial was not legally sufficient to support his conviction, and he also asserts that the trial judge erroneously refused to allow him to introduce evidence of the arresting officer's bias against him. For the reasons explained here, we conclude that neither of Alexie's claims has merit, and we therefore affirm his conviction.
Underlying facts
Because Alexie contends that the evidence presented at his trial was insufficient to support his conviction for resisting arrest, we present that evidence here in the light most favorable to upholding the jury's verdict.
See, e.g., Iyapana v. State, 284 P.3d 841, 848-49 (Alaska App. 2012); Morrell v. State, 216 P.3d 574, 576 (Alaska App. 2009).
On April 11, 2010, Bethel Police Officer Jeffrey Lee was investigating a hit and run accident. Sam Alexie Jr., a relative of the defendant, Charles Alexie, was a suspect in the hit and run, and Officer Lee went to Sam Alexie's house to contact him.
Charles Alexie was also in the house when Officer Lee arrived, and he told Sam not to speak with the officer. Lee asked Alexie not to interfere with the interview, but Alexie ignored Lee's request, and he continued to urge Sam not to cooperate with the investigation. Alexie was aggressive and belligerent, and he appeared to be intoxicated. Alexie continued to interfere with Lee's efforts to interview Sam, both inside and outside the house. Eventually, Lee placed Alexie under arrest for disorderly conduct.
When Lee arrested Alexie, he handcuffed Alexie's hands behind his back and then took Alexie to his patrol vehicle. As they approached the vehicle, Alexie became angrier. When Lee was getting ready to put Alexie inside the vehicle, Alexie tried to pull away from Lee. He looked at Lee and told him that he was going to kill him. However, Lee was able to get Alexie into the patrol car without further incident.
Once Alexie was in the vehicle, Lee began driving him to jail. During this ride, Alexie became still angrier. He continued to threaten to kill Lee, and also said that he would kill Lee's family. Alexie then began butting his head against the partition separating the front and rear seats of the patrol vehicle, and he told Lee that he was going to sue him.
At some point during the ride, Alexie managed to move his cuffed hands from behind his back to the front of his body. When Lee arrived at the jail, he got out and walked to the rear door, preparing to get Alexie out of the vehicle. When Lee opened the door, he saw that Alexie had maneuvered his hands to the front of his body. According to Lee's testimony, Alexie had his hands up and was "coming towards the door" — that is, coming toward Lee.
Given Alexie's prior conduct and the threats he had made earlier, Lee believed that Alexie had moved his hands to the front of his body so that he could more easily attack Lee, and that Alexie was now getting ready to carry out that attack.
Lee grabbed the handcuffs to control Alexie's arms, and then he grabbed Alexie, pulled him out of the vehicle, and put him on the ground. Lee pinned Alexie to the ground by putting his right knee on Alexie's head and his leg on Alexie's torso. Lee then radioed for assistance.
Once Alexie was pinned on the ground, he stopped struggling. Lee noticed that Alexie had sustained a bloody nose, so he shifted Alexie's position so that Alexie would not inhale his own blood. A little later, Alexie was taken to the hospital to determine if he needed medical treatment.
Alexie was at the hospital for about two hours. He was examined and x-rayed, but his only injuries were a bloody and swollen nose, a swollen lip, and blackened eyes. After hospital personnel cleared Alexie for release, he was returned to the jail and booked.
Alexie's claim that this evidence was insufficient to support his conviction for resisting arrest
Under AS 11.56.700(a)(1), a person commits the offense of resisting arrest if, knowing that they are being arrested, the person uses force for the purpose of preventing the police from making the arrest.
But even though the term "force" is normally defined to include "any bodily impact [or] restraint" (or the threat of imminent bodily impact or restraint), see AS 11.81.900(b)(27), this Court has held that the resisting arrest statute does not encompass mere "non-submission" to an arrest. Howard v. State, 101 P.3d 1054, 1059 (Alaska App. 2004), and Eide v. State, 168 P.3d 499, 502 (lead opinion) & 503-04 (concurring opinion of Judge Mannheimer) (Alaska App. 2007). As we noted in Howard, "a certain amount of physical contact will take place during any arrest, and the policy behind the [resisting arrest] statute is to confine the offense to uses of force that involve more than mere noncompliance." Howard, 101 P.3d at 1059.
In the present case, Alexie argues that his conduct amounted to no more than "non-submission" to the arrest. We disagree. Viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the verdict, Alexie was belligerent and agitated, and he repeatedly threatened to kill Officer Lee. During the ride to the jail, Alexie maneuvered his cuffed hands to the front of his body. Given the circumstances, the jury could reasonably infer that Alexie did this for the purpose of facilitating an attack on Lee. And when Lee and Alexie arrived at the jail, and Lee opened the rear door of the patrol car to let Alexie out, Alexie came at Lee with his hands raised in front of him.
These facts, viewed in the light most favorable to the verdict, are sufficient to establish the offense of resisting arrest. The jury could reasonably conclude that Alexie did not merely try to obstruct the arrest by non-submission — that, instead, Alexie went beyond mere non-submission when he used force directly against the officer (by threatening an imminent attack on the officer). The jury could also reasonably conclude that Alexie acted with the intention of preventing the arrest. Accordingly, we conclude that the evidence was legally sufficient to support Alexie's conviction for this crime.
See Fallon v. State, 221 P.3d 1016, 1021 (Alaska App. 2010).
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Did the trial judge improperly prevent Alexie from presenting evidence of Officer Lee's bias?
At Alexie's trial, one of his defense attorney's primary themes was that Officer Lee used excessive force when he arrested Alexie. According to the defense attorney, Lee knew he was in trouble for using too much force, so he made up a story about Alexie resisting arrest.
In connection with this defense, Alexie's attorney wanted to call the doctor who examined Alexie when he was brought to the hospital. When the defense attorney was asked to explain the relevance of the doctor's proposed testimony, the defense attorney answered that the doctor could describe the extent of Alexie's injuries when he was examined at the hospital. The defense attorney argued that the extent or severity of Alexie's injuries was relevant because, the greater Alexie's injuries, the stronger would be Officer Lee's motive to falsely accuse Alexie of assaulting him.
The trial judge noted that, because the real question was Officer Lee's mental state (his motive to fabricate a story of assault to justify his own behavior), the doctor's knowledge of the extent of Alexie's injuries was not particularly probative unless it could somehow be linked to the officer's knowledge (or at least suspicions) of the extent of Alexie's injuries.
Officer Lee had previously testified that he did not accompany Alexie to the hospital, and that he was unaware what treatment Alexie received there. Nevertheless, Lee acknowledged that he knew that Alexie had suffered a bloody nose during the struggle, and that Alexie was taken to the hospital emergency room before he was booked into the jail.
In addition, the jurors heard testimony from other witnesses that Alexie spent two hours at the hospital, that he was x-rayed, and that he had visible injuries: a swollen nose with blood in one nostril, a swollen and bloody lip, and blackened eyes.
On appeal, Alexie renews his argument that the doctor's proposed testimony was crucial to the jury's evaluation of Officer Lee's potential motive to falsely accuse Alexie of assault or resisting arrest. But the trial judge's analysis of this issue was correct: the nature or extent of Alexie's injuries (as revealed by the doctor's examination at the hospital) would not be probative of Officer Lee's potential motive to falsify charges against Alexie unless there was some reason to believe that Lee was aware of those injuries, or at least had reason to suspect that Alexie had suffered those injuries, when Lee drew up the criminal complaint against Alexie.
In addition, there is nothing in the record to indicate that Alexie suffered any injuries beyond the ones that the jury heard about: the injuries to Alexie's nose and lip, and his blackened eyes. The defense attorney made no offer of proof that the doctor would add anything to this list. In other words, the record contains no suggestion that the additional testimony proposed by the defense attorney would have made any difference to the outcome of the case.
For these reasons, we uphold the trial judge's evidentiary ruling.
Conclusion
The judgement of the district court is AFFIRMED.