Hazelwood v. State
| Decision Date | 15 March 1996 |
| Docket Number | No. A-3452,A-3452 |
| Citation | 912 P.2d 1266 |
| Parties | Joseph J. HAZELWOOD, Appellant, v. STATE of Alaska, Appellee. |
| Court | Alaska Court of Appeals |
Richard H. Friedman, Friedman, Rubin & White, Anchorage, for Appellant.
Cynthia M. Hora, Assistant Attorney General, Office of Special Prosecutions and Appeals, Anchorage, and Bruce M. Botelho, Attorney General, Juneau, for Appellee.
Before BRYNER, C.J., and COATS, J., and HODGES, Superior Court Judge. *
Joseph J. Hazelwood was convicted by a jury of negligent discharge of oil. This court reversed his conviction on appeal; we held that Hazelwood was immune from prosecution and directed that the charge be dismissed. Hazelwood v. State, 836 P.2d 943 (Alaska App.1992). The Alaska Supreme Court subsequently reversed our decision and remanded the case to us. State v. Hazelwood, 866 P.2d 827 (Alaska 1993). On remand, we hold that Hazelwood's prosecution was permissible under the inevitable discovery doctrine, but we conclude that the trial court erred in ruling that certain items of evidence were admissible under the doctrine and in instructing the jury on civil, rather than criminal negligence. We thus reverse Hazelwood's conviction and remand for a new trial.
Shortly after midnight on March 24, 1989, the Exxon Valdez, an oil tanker operated by the Exxon Shipping Company, ran aground on Bligh Reef, spilling eleven million gallons of oil into Prince William Sound. Joseph J. Hazelwood, the vessel's captain, was convicted by a jury of negligent discharge of oil, a class B misdemeanor. See AS 46.03.740; former AS 46.03.790(a).
Hazelwood appealed to this court, contending that the trial court erred in denying his motion to dismiss on grounds of immunity, in failing to suppress certain evidence of his intoxication, and in instructing the jury on the applicable culpable mental state for his offense. Hazelwood also challenged his sentence as excessive.
In Hazelwood v. State, 836 P.2d 943 (Alaska App.1992), we reversed Hazelwood's conviction, holding that, under Section 311 of the Federal Water Pollution Prevention and Control Act, 33 U.S.C. § 1321(b)(5) (1988), Hazelwood was entitled to use and derivative use immunity as a result of his immediate oil-spill report. 1 In reaching this conclusion, we considered and rejected two exceptions to the exclusionary rule that the trial court had invoked in finding Hazelwood's prosecution permissible despite the statutory grant of immunity he received by virtue of his oil-spill report. Hazelwood, 836 P.2d at 946-54.
The trial court had ruled that the prosecution's evidence derived from a source wholly independent of Hazelwood's oil-spill report and was thus admissible under the independent source doctrine. We found, however, that essentially all of the state's evidence against Hazelwood derived directly from his immunized report of the oil spill, and not from any independent source. We thus found that the record failed to support the trial court's conclusion that prosecution was permissible under the independent source doctrine. Id. at 948-50.
The trial court also had found that virtually all of the evidence against Hazelwood would inevitably have been discovered even if The Alaska Supreme Court subsequently reviewed, and eventually reversed, our decision. State v. Hazelwood, 866 P.2d 827 (Alaska 1993). Although the supreme court affirmed our ruling that the record failed to justify application of the independent source rule in Hazelwood's case, id. at 831, the court held that we had erred in holding the inevitable discovery doctrine categorically inapplicable to cases of immunity. Id. at 834.
Hazelwood had not reported the spill; the trial court thus had concluded that Hazelwood's prosecution was warranted under the inevitable discovery rule. We rejected the trial court's ruling. For purposes of our decision, we "assume[d] that ... Judge Johnstone's factual findings concerning the inevitability of the Exxon Valdez 's discovery are supported by the record." Id. at 951. We nevertheless held, as a matter of state law, that the inevitable discovery doctrine did not extend to congressionally enacted grants of immunity. Id. at 954
In reaching this conclusion, the supreme court first disapproved this court's application of Alaska law to decide the inevitable discovery issue; the court declared that federal law applied: Id. at 829 n. 1. 2 The supreme court went on to decide, as a matter of federal law, that the inevitable discovery doctrine does extend to cases (like Hazelwood's) involving statutory grants of use and derivative use immunity. Id. at 834. Noting that it "express[ed] no view as to the admissibility of any particular portion of the State's evidence against Hazelwood" and that "[s]uch evidentiary questions remain for resolution by the court of appeals," id. at 831 n. 7, the supreme court remanded the case to us for further proceedings:
We therefore hold, in accordance with the applicable U.S. Supreme Court precedent, that the court of appeals erred in ruling that the inevitable discovery doctrine has no application in the context of this statutory grant of immunity. Since our reading of Kastigar and Nix [v. Williams, 467 U.S. 431, 104 S.Ct. 2501, 81 L.Ed.2d 377 (1984) ] impels us to the conclusion that application of the doctrine of inevitable discovery to the use and derivative use immunity provided for in 33 U.S.C. § 1321(b)(5) is permissible, we remand this case to the court of appeals for further proceedings.
Id. at 834. 3
Upon remand of Hazelwood's case by the supreme court, the parties filed supplemental briefs with this court, and the case was submitted to us for renewed consideration.
The supreme court's decision initially calls upon us to address the inevitable discovery issue we previously left open: whether the trial court's findings applying the doctrine to Hazelwood's case are supported by As we said in our initial opinion, the inevitable discovery doctrine, as approved in Nix v. Williams, 467 U.S. 431, 104 S.Ct. 2501, 81 L.Ed.2d 377 (1984), works "to avoid suppressing illegally obtained evidence when the prosecution has demonstrated that, although its evidence actually derived from a source tainted by illegality, the same evidence would inevitably have been discovered through lawful, untainted means had the illegality not occurred." Hazelwood v. State, 836 P.2d at 950 (citing Wayne R. LaFave, Search and Seizure § 11.4(a) at 378-88 (2d ed. 1987)). Federal courts have been circumspect in interpreting and applying the doctrine; they have construed it as a narrow exception to the general rule of suppression--an exception under which the hypothetical inevitability of a lawful discovery must be inferred from evidence relating to the situation actually existing at the time of the unlawful discovery, not from after-the-fact testimony speculating about what might have been had no unlawful discovery occurred.
the record. 4 This requires a threshold consideration of the scope of the inevitable discovery doctrine itself
Nix itself involved a situation in which the police discovered a murder victim's body after being directed to it by a defendant whose cooperation had been obtained in violation of his Sixth Amendment right to counsel. At the time of the violation, however, a lawful search in the vicinity of the body was already Following Nix 's lead, some federal courts have been willing to apply the inevitable discovery doctrine only when an investigation was already underway before the occurrence of the unlawful act in question. This line of cases, exemplified by United States v. Satterfield, 743 F.2d 827, 846 (11th Cir.1984) (emphasis in original), holds that "the prosecution must demonstrate that the lawful means which made discovery inevitable were possessed by the police and were being actively pursued prior to the occurrence of the illegal conduct." 5
underway. Finding that the previously initiated search inevitably would have led to the body, the Court invoked the inevitable discovery doctrine. 467 U.S. at 449-50, 104 S.Ct. at 2511-12.
Other federal courts, including those of the Ninth Circuit, have enlarged the doctrine by accepting proof that "pursuant to some standardized procedures or established routine a certain evidence-revealing event would definitely have occurred later." 5 Wayne R. LaFave, Search and Seizure § 11.4(a), at 249-50 (3d ed. 1996). See, for example, United States v. Ramirez-Sandoval, 872 F.2d 1392, 1399 (9th Cir.1989) (citation omitted): 6
[T]his circuit does not require that the evidence be obtained from a previously initiated, independent investigation. The government can meet its burden by establishing that, by following routine procedures, the police would inevitably have uncovered the evidence.
Courts in this category, however, have required the government to prove the existence of "an invariable, routine procedure," United States v. Gorski, 852 F.2d 692, 696 (2d Cir.1988), or to demonstrate that "policy dictated" the action that would have inevitably resulted in discovery, United States v. Infante-Ruiz, 13 F.3d 498, 504 (1st Cir.1994). 7 The government must show not only that the procedure would inevitably have disclosed the evidence but also that the procedure was in place and would have been followed. 8
Absent proof that discovery of evidence was inevitable in light of either events already in progress or procedures already in place when an unlawful discovery occurred, federal courts faced with tainted evidence have uniformly declined to apply the inevitable discovery doctrine. 9 In the present case, the state has cited no federal or state rulings that...
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