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Hoople v. State7/16/1999
Appeal from the Superior Court, Third Judicial District, Palmer, Beverly W. Cutler, Judge.
Under Alaska law, the offense of driving while intoxicated is normally a misdemeanor. But AS 28.35.030(n) declares that this offense is a class C felony if, within the previous five years, the defendant has been convicted two or more times for either driving while intoxicated or refusing to submit to a breath test.
Dorothea Hoople was convicted of felony DWI under this statute. On appeal, she argues that this statute violates the constitutional guarantee of due process because it fails to require proof that the defendant acted with a culpable mental state regarding the defendant's prior convictions.
Hoople's argument runs counter to our decisions in Bell v. State, Ortberg v. State, and Noblit v. State. All three of these cases dealt with situations in which an offense was divided into degrees: one statutory provision defined the basic crime, while another provision declared that a defendant was guilty of a higher degree of crime if they committed the basic crime under specified aggravating circumstances.
(In Bell, the class A misdemeanor of promoting prostitution in the third degree (inducing a person to engage in prostitution) was aggravated to a class B felony because the victim was under the age of 16. In Ortberg, the class B misdemeanor of fourth-degree criminal mischief (intentionally damaging someone else's property) was aggravated to a class C felony because the property was worth $500 or more. And in Noblit, the class B misdemeanor of hindering prosecution in the second degree (rendering assistance to a criminal) was aggravated to a class C felony because the defendant rendered assistance to a criminal who had committed a felony.
In all three of these cases, we held that a defendant could be convicted of the higher degree of crime without proof that the defendant possessed any culpable mental state regarding the aggravating circumstance that distinguished the higher degree of crime from the basic crime. Bell and Noblit are arguably distinguishable from Hoople's case because, in both Bell and Noblit, the legislative commentary to the statutes in question expressly indicated that the legislature did not intend for the government to prove any culpable mental state regarding the aggravating circumstance. But in Ortberg (the case involving purposeful destruction of property), there was no such commentary. This court simply relied on the doctrine that, when the defendant's basic underlying conduct is criminal , no culpable mental state need be proved with respect to an aggravating circumstance that raises the degree of the crime.
In fact, Hoople's argument is even less compelling than the argument in Ortberg. This is because Hoople's basic crime - driving while intoxicated - does not require proof of any culpable mental state regarding the circumstance that makes the driving illegal (the fact that the driver was intoxicated or that the driver's blood-alcohol content exceeded .10 percent). In Morgan v. Anchorage and Van Brunt v. State, this court rejected arguments that the crime of driving while intoxicated would violate the due process clause unless it was interpreted to require proof of a culpable mental state regarding the driver's intoxication. As we stated in Morgan,
"It ... does not make sense to allow a [driver] to claim that his intentional consumption of alcohol impaired his ability to know that he was intoxicated. ... person who drinks and drives [must] be responsible for not drinking to the point where he is under the influence[.] He should drive at his peril rather than only at the public's peril. We find no d
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