Langevin v. State

• Decision Date: 03 June 2011
• Docket Number: No. A–10510.,A–10510.
• Citation: 258 P.3d 866
• Parties: Jerry W. LANGEVIN, Appellant,v.STATE of Alaska, Appellee.
• Court: Alaska Court of Appeals

258 P.3d 866

Jerry W. LANGEVIN, Appellant,

v.STATE of Alaska, Appellee.

No. A–10510.

Court of Appeals of Alaska.

June 3, 2011.

Jane B. Martinez, Anchorage (under contract with the Public Defender Agency), and Quinlan Steiner, Public Defender, Anchorage, for the Appellant.Ben Seekins, Assistant District Attorney, Fairbanks, and Daniel S. Sullivan, Attorney General, Juneau, for the Appellee.Before: COATS, Chief Judge, and MANNHEIMER and BOLGER, Judges.

OPINION

MANNHEIMER, Judge.

Jerry W. Langevin appeals his conviction for driving under the influence. This appeal presents three questions concerning the corpus delicti rule—the doctrine that a criminal conviction can not rest solely on the defendant's confession.

The first question is an issue of law: whether, under Alaska law, the trial judge or the jury is the one who decides whether the government's evidence satisfies the corpus delicti rule. The second question is case-specific: whether, given the evidence presented at Langevin's trial, the State satisfied the corpus delicti requirement. The third question is again a question of law: when the State fails to satisfy the corpus delicti rule, but when the State's evidence, taken as a whole ( i.e., including the defendant's confession), is sufficient to survive a motion for a judgement of acquittal, is the defendant's remedy outright dismissal of the criminal charge, or is it a retrial?

For the reasons explained in this opinion and in this Court's prior decision in Dodds v. State, 997 P.2d 536 (Alaska App.2000), we conclude that the issue of corpus delicti is a question for the trial judge.

In addition, for the reasons explained here, we conclude that the State's evidence in Langevin's case was not sufficient to comply with Alaska's corpus delicti rule.

Finally, we hold that when a trial judge erroneously rules that the State has satisfied the corpus delicti rule, and this Court reverses the trial judge's ruling on appeal, the defendant is entitled to a new trial but not outright dismissal of the charge.

Underlying facts

In the early morning hours of November 27, 2008, officers of the Fairbanks police went to an apartment building in response to a report of a domestic dispute. This report was made by Langevin's girlfriend, Shari Kelly. Based on what the police discovered when they arrived, Langevin was charged with driving under the influence. Here is the State's evidence, presented in the light most favorable to the jury's verdict:

When the police arrived, they found Langevin in the hallway outside his apartment. Langevin told the officers that he had been standing outside for over an hour—that Kelly had taken his keys and had locked him out of their residence. This statement was verified when the police entered the residence and interviewed Kelly; they found the keys in her possession.

Langevin was visibly intoxicated; in fact, he conceded to the officers that he was “three sheets to the wind”. However, Langevin also stated several times that he had not had anything to drink since he arrived home. Rather, Langevin said, he and Kelly had been drinking at the Manchu Bar earlier that night.

According to Langevin, he and Kelly stayed at the bar until closing time (which, under Fairbanks law, would have been 3:00 a.m.), and then he started driving them home. In his statements to the police, Langevin gave two accounts of how his driving ended. At one point in the interview, Langevin indicated that he drove all the way home, at which point he stopped and said, “I'm not driving no more, period. I'm throwing the keys away.” But at another point in the interview, Langevin said that Kelly grabbed the keys while he was driving ( i.e., while the keys were in the ignition) and turned the truck off.

Langevin pointed out the truck that he had driven. However, the police did not check the truck to see if the engine was warm or to see if there was any other indication that the truck had been recently driven.

Langevin's statement that he had not been drinking since he came home was corroborated by the fact that the officers could not see any containers of alcoholic beverages in Langevin's vicinity.

At Langevin's trial, the State did not call Kelly as a witness, nor did the State present any other witnesses who had actually seen Langevin driving the truck, or who had seen Langevin and Kelly at the Manchu Bar earlier that morning.

At the close of the State's case, Langevin's attorney asked the district court to enter a judgement of acquittal on the basis that the State had failed to satisfy the corpus delicti rule, by failing to introduce evidence (apart from Langevin's statements to the police) to establish that the crime of driving under the influence had been committed. The district court denied this motion. Langevin's attorney also asked the trial judge to instruct the jury on the corpus delicti rule ( i.e., telling the jurors that Langevin could not be convicted unless the jurors concluded that the State had satisfied the corpus delicti rule). The trial judge refused to give the requested instruction. The jury convicted Langevin of driving under the influence.

Should the ultimate decision as to whether the government has satisfied the corpus delicti rule be made by the trial judge or, instead, the jury?

Our decision in Dodds v. State, 997 P.2d 536, 539–543 (Alaska App.2000), contains a lengthy discussion of the corpus delicti rule and the ways in which this rule has been interpreted in American jurisdictions. Some jurisdictions view corpus delicti as an evidentiary foundation that the government must lay in order to justify the introduction of the defendant's out-of-court confession. But other jurisdictions view corpus delicti as an implicit element of the government's proof (in cases where the government introduces evidence of the defendant's confession).

Under the “evidentiary foundation” view, the trial judge decides whether the State has satisfied the corpus delicti rule (just as the judge decides other evidentiary questions). But under the “implicit element” view, the question of corpus delicti is decided at the end of the trial by the trier of fact ( i.e., by the jury, unless the defendant has consented to a bench trial).

Although we discussed this matter at length in Dodds, we did not have to decide which of these two approaches was the proper one under Alaska law—because Dodds raised the issue as a claim of plain error. Id. at 543. But in Langevin's case, the defense attorney explicitly asked to have the jury decide whether the State had satisfied the requirements of the corpus delicti rule, so we must now declare Alaska law on this issue.

As we explained in Dodds, Alaska cases (both before and after statehood) have followed the “evidentiary foundation” approach to corpus delicti.¹ That is, the corpus delicti rule has been interpreted in Alaska as a rule that defines the level of supporting evidence that the government must present if the government wishes to introduce the defendant's out-of-court confession for the truth of the matters asserted. Under this approach,

[The] decision [regarding corpus delicti is] made by the trial judge before the case is submitted to the jury. The judge [assesses] the sufficiency of the State's evidence to prove the corpus delicti, and this decision [is] one of law—similar to the judge's assessment of the sufficiency of any other evidentiary foundation under Alaska Evidence Rule 104(a)-(b). Assuming the judge [rules] that the corpus delicti had been established, then, at the end of trial, the jury [considers] all of the evidence (including the defendant's confession) and [decides] whether the State [has] established each element of the charged crime beyond a reasonable doubt.Dodds, 997 P.2d at 540.

In his brief to this Court, Langevin points out that several other jurisdictions follow the “implicit element” approach to corpus delicti, and he urges us to do the same. But Langevin does not address the prior Alaska cases on this issue—cases which follow the “evidentiary foundation” approach—nor does Langevin explain why those cases were wrongly decided or should now be abandoned on policy grounds.

Moreover, in Dodds we pointed out that the “implicit element” approach presents a major difficulty—because, at the end of the trial, the jury is asked to decide whether the government has satisfied the corpus delicti rule after the jurors have already heard the defendant's confession:

The “implicit element” approach to corpus delicti is difficult to reconcile with our law's normal view concerning a jury's ability to dispassionately assess a confession. Confessions can be powerful evidence, and courts have traditionally feared that, once a jury hears the defendant's confession, the jury will be unable to put aside this knowledge.

One example of the cautious approach taken by courts when faced with admitting defendants' confessions is the Bruton rule—the rule that, when two or more defendants are being tried jointly, if one defendant has confessed and has implicated the co-defendants, that confession can not be admitted unless the confessing defendant takes the stand. [ See Bruton v. United States, 391 U.S. 123, 126, 128–29, 88 S.Ct. 1620, 1622, 1624, 20 L.Ed.2d 476 (1968).] ... The [Supreme] Court concluded that, once the jury heard that one of the defendants had confessed and had implicated one or more co-defendants, the jurors simply could not be trusted to obey an instruction that forbade them from considering that confession when assessing the guilt of the other defendants.

The “implicit element” approach to the corpus delicti rule suffers from this same psychological difficulty. Under this approach, if the trial judge rules that corpus delicti is satisfied, the jury would hear the defendant's confession, only to later be asked to set the confession to one side and determine whether the government's remaining evidence is sufficient to establish the corpus delicti. One...