Summary
holding that an out-of-custody defendant is entitled to petition for review of a trial court's bail decision
Summary of this case from Love v. Municipality of AnchorageOpinion
Court of Appeals No. A–12537
06-17-2016
Justin Patrick Isadore, Petitioner, v. State of Alaska, Respondent.
Emily Jura, Assistant Public Defender, Kodiak, and Quinlan Steiner, Public Defender, Anchorage, for the Petitioner. Stephen B. Wallace, District Attorney, Kodiak, and Craig W. Richards, Attorney General, Juneau, for the Respondent.
Emily Jura, Assistant Public Defender, Kodiak, and Quinlan Steiner, Public Defender, Anchorage, for the Petitioner.
Stephen B. Wallace, District Attorney, Kodiak, and Craig W. Richards, Attorney General, Juneau, for the Respondent.
Before: Mannheimer, Chief Judge, and Allard, Judge.
OPINION
Judge MANNHEIMER.
Justin Patrick Isadore challenges the conditions of his bail. Isadore has satisfied his bail conditions, and he has been released from custody, but he argues that the amount of monetary bail imposed by the superior court is excessive.
Although Isadore has designated this case as an “appeal”, it is instead a petition for review.
Bail orders are interlocutory orders, not final orders. And normally, a litigant has no right to “appeal” an interlocutory order—that is, no right to require that an appellate court review the challenged order. Instead, under Alaska Appellate Rule 402, a litigant may petition an appellate court to review an interlocutory order issued by a lower court—but the appellate court may, in its discretion, decline to exercise its power of review.
(We discussed this point of law in Rozkydal v. State , 938 P.2d 1091, 1094 (Alaska App. 1997), and again most recently in Mund v. State , 325 P.3d 535, 540 (Alaska App. 2014).)
Sometimes the legislature will enact a statute that grants litigants a right of appeal with respect to particular non-final orders. The bail appeal statute, AS 12.30.030(a), is such a statute: it grants defendants the right to appeal a trial court's order setting their bail conditions. But this right of appeal is limited to defendants who remain in custody following the lower court's decision:
Appeal from conditions of release .... If a person remains in custody after [the bail] review provided for in AS 12.30.006(c) or (d), an appeal may be taken to the court having appellate jurisdiction over the court imposing the [bail] conditions.
(Emphasis added)
Isadore has been released from custody, so he is not entitled to appeal his bail conditions. That is, he is not entitled to demand that this Court review the conditions of his bail.
Nevertheless, Isadore is entitled to petition this Court to review the trial court's bail decision. In State v. Browder , 486 P.2d 925, 929–931 (Alaska 1971), the supreme court held that when a litigant wishes to raise an issue that lies within an appellate court's jurisdiction, but the litigant has no right of appeal, the litigant can still pursue a petition for review. Thus, Isadore may petition this Court to review his bail conditions—a review that this Court may, in its discretion, deny.
This Court has reviewed Isadore's petition and the State's response. Based on our review of those pleadings, Isadore's petition for bail review is DENIED.