Swartz v. Municipality Anchorage
| Citation | 436 P.3d 1104 |
| Decision Date | 15 February 2019 |
| Docket Number | Court of Appeals No. A-12810 |
| Parties | Caroline K. SWARTZ, Appellant, v. MUNICIPALITY OF ANCHORAGE, Appellee. |
| Court | Court of Appeals of Alaska |
Shaul L. Goldberg, Denali Law Group, Anchorage, for the Appellant.
Sarah E. Stanley, Assistant Municipal Prosecutor, and William D. Falsey, Municipal Attorney, Anchorage, for the Appellee.
Before: Mannheimer, Chief Judge, and Allard and Wollenberg, Judges.
In January 2015, Caroline K. Swartz pleaded guilty to driving while license suspended or revoked in violation of the Anchorage Municipal Code.1 Pursuant to a Criminal Rule 11 agreement, Swartz was sentenced to 90 days’ imprisonment with 90 days suspended, a $500 fine with $250 suspended, 3 years’ probation, and 80 hours of mandatory community work service — i.e. , community work service hours that were mandated by the municipal ordinance as a condition of her probation.2
As part of her plea agreement, Swartz agreed that she would complete her community work service hours within six months, and she further agreed that any uncompleted portion of the 80 hours of community work service "will convert to jail" if it was not completed by the court’s deadline. No conversion rate was specified in the plea agreement.
Swartz ultimately completed only 8 hours of the mandated 80 hours of community work service, leaving 72 hours uncompleted. The Municipality petitioned the court to revoke Swartz’s probation and argued that the 72 hours of community work service should be automatically converted into 9 days in jail pursuant to the plea agreement.
The court held a hearing on the petition in February 2017. At that hearing, Swartz argued that the court had no authority to convert her community work service to jail time because the Alaska legislature had recently amended state law to prevent such conversions. Swartz also argued that conversion to jail time was impermissible even before the change of law under our 2000 decision, State v. Fogg .3 The Municipality argued that the change in law did not apply to Swartz’s case and that Fogg was inapplicable. According to the Municipality, the court had the authority to convert community work service hours into jail time under the municipal code. The Municipality also emphasized that Swartz had agreed to the conversion as part of her original plea agreement.
The district court judge agreed with the Municipality and imposed 9 days of jail time for the 72 hours of uncompleted community work service. Swartz now appeals, arguing that the 9 days of jail time was unlawfully imposed. For the reasons explained here, we conclude that the court erred in imposing the 9 days of jail time.
Why we conclude that the court erred when it imposed 9 days of jail time
In 2016, the Alaska legislature amended AS 12.55.055 to expressly prohibit courts from converting uncompleted community work service hours into jail time.4 Subsection (g) of AS 12.55.055 now declares:
The legislature also added subsection (h) to AS 12.55.055, which requires the court to instead convert any uncompleted community work hours into a monetary fine according to a specified formula.5
Both of these provisions went into effect on July 12, 2016, and they are applicable to all "community work service imposed on or after [July 12, 2016] for offenses committed on or after [that] effective date."6 Thus, if Swartz were being sentenced for conduct occurring on or after July 12, 2016, there would be no question that the court would not be permitted to convert her uncompleted community work service to jail time.
The complication we face in Swartz’s case is that the community work service hours at issue here were imposed in 2015, prior to the change in state law. Moreover, the parties specifically agreed, as part of their plea agreement, that any uncompleted community work service hours would be converted to jail time. Seemingly, then, the question before us is whether this provision of the plea agreement is enforceable despite the change in the law.
But we conclude that we need not resolve that question in the context of this case. Rather, we conclude that the conversion provision of the plea agreement is not enforceable for a different reason: The provision fails to define a material term of the agreement — namely, what conversion rate should apply.
One reasonable interpretation of the agreement is that one hour of community work service would equal one hour in jail. Thus, 72 hours of community work service left incomplete would mean 72 hours (3 days) in jail. However, at Swartz’s probation revocation sentencing, the district court judge viewed the community work service hours as comprising ten 8-hour work days, with each of these ten days translating into a full 24-hour day in jail. Thus, the district court concluded that Swartz’s remaining 72 hours of community work service translated into 9 days of jail time.7 This is the sentence the court imposed.
Given the failure of the parties to identify the conversion rate that would apply here, we strike as unenforceable the provision of the plea agreement requiring uncompleted community work service hours to convert to jail time. The Municipality is free to seek withdrawal from the plea agreement if it believes that the failure of this provision materially alters or defeats the plea agreement. Alternatively, the parties may simply renew the probation revocation...
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