Robinson v. State, 1305
| Decision Date | 29 October 1971 |
| Docket Number | No. 1305,1305 |
| Citation | 489 P.2d 1271 |
| Parties | George Ronald ROBINSON, Appellant, v. STATE of Alaska, Appellee. |
| Court | Alaska Supreme Court |
Before BONEY, C. J., and DIMOND, RABINOWITZ, CONNOR, and ERWIN, JJ.
Appellant was found guilty after trial of the crime of robbery and was sentenced to a term of five years. He raises two points on this appeal. First, appellant claims that he was denied due process of law by virtue of the state's failure to record the proceedings before the grand jury which resulted in that body's return of an indictment against him. Second, he argues that the trial court erred in denying his motion to suppress certain evidence.
We have recently passed upon appeals similar to the one pressed here in regard to the grand jury issue. In Robinson v. State, 487 P.2d 681 (Alaska 1971), we noted that a trial court's refusal to instruct the state to produce a grand jury transcript cannot be deemed prejudicial to the defendant where, in fact, no record had been kept and no transcript had been made of the grand jury proceedings. Likewise, in McKay v. State, Opinion No. 729 (Alaska, October 1, 1971), 489 P.2d 145, we noted that there is no provision in our Criminal Rules requiring that grand jury proceedings be recorded in any manner. There we held that the question of whether the defendant had shown a particularized need to see the records was rendered moot by the absence of any such records.
Appellant concedes that neither the Rules of Criminal Procedure nor the case law of Alaska and other jurisdictions support an attack on the practice of not recording grand jury proceedings. He argues instead that 'policy reasons' should lead this court to require recordation.
But appellant has not persuaded us that he suffered injury as the result of the lack of a transcript here. Counsel for appellant vigorously cross-examined the state's witnesses at trial, the same witnesses who appeared before the grand jury and upon whose testimony the indictment was based. No reason, other than the use of a transcript as a possible instrument of impeachment, has been suggested as to how appellant's attack on the indictment or his cross-examination of these witnesses would have been strengthened had a transcript of the grand jury proceedings been available. We do not think that the absence of material, not wilfully withheld or destroyed, which might potentially have been of impeaching value, amounts to a denial of due process of law. Further, the state has justifiably placed reliance on the present system. We would be unfairly penalizing the state were we to overturn appellant's conviction solely on the ground that generalized policy reasons support the keeping of grand jury records as a good practice. We decline to do so. 1
Appellant's second point is that the court erred in denying his motion to suppress certain evidence which was seized by an officer of the Anchorage...
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