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State v. Simpson4/25/2003
No. 1869
Under the due process clause of the Alaska Constitution, a person arrested for driving while intoxicated is entitled to an independent test of his blood alcohol level. The State charged Gregory Simpson with felony driving while intoxicated (DWI) based in part upon two prior California convictions for driving while intoxicated. Simpson moved to suppress the State's use of his prior California convictions on the ground that those convictions were constitutionally suspect under Alaska law because his right to an independent test was not constitutionally protected in California. Superior Court Judge Stephanie E. Joannides agreed with Simpson and granted his motion. The State filed a petition for review. We granted the petition. We reverse Judge Joannides's decision and conclude that Simpson's prior California convictions are admissible to support the felony DWI charge.
Normally driving while intoxicated is a class A misdemeanor. But the State can charge the person with a class C felony if the person has two or more prior convictions "since January 1, 1996, and within the 10 years preceeding the date of the present offense." Judge Joannides's ruling prevented the State from using Simpson's two prior California convictions to charge Simpson with a felony.
In reaching her decision to not allow the State to use Simpson's prior convictions to support a felony driving while intoxicated charge, Judge Joannides relied on two cases where we held that some prior convictions were too unreliable to enhance a defendant's sentence. In Pananen v. State, we addressed a prior conviction where the defendant had not been afforded a right to counsel. In Pananen, the defendant was convicted of two counts of driving while intoxicated. The trial court sentenced the defendant as a third offender because he had two prior convictions for that offense in Wisconsin. On appeal, the defendant argued that the first of the two Wisconsin convictions was invalid to enhance his sentence because, under Wisconsin law, he was not afforded the right to be represented by counsel. We concluded "that an uncounseled conviction is simply too unreliable to be depended on for purposes of imposing a sentence of incarceration, whether that sentence is imposed directly or collaterally." Based on this conclusion, we held that " ecause Wisconsin law did not extend to Pananen the right to court-appointed counsel for his first DWI offense, Pananen's first Wisconsin conviction should not have been relied upon by the district court as a basis for determining the applicable mandatory minimum sentence."
In State v. Peel, we addressed whether a prior driving while intoxicated conviction could be used to support a mandatory minimum sentence for driving while intoxicated where the defendant had been denied the right to a jury trial. In Peel, the trial court concluded that it would not use the defendant's prior Louisiana conviction for driving while intoxicated to impose a mandatory minimum sentence required by law for second driving while intoxicated offenders. The trial court relied on the fact that, under Louisiana law, Peel had not been entitled to a trial by jury for his prior offense. The State challenged the trial court's ruling, distinguishing Pananen by arguing that the right to a jury trial was not as critical as the right to counsel. We relied on Alaska decisions that equated the right to counsel and the right to a jury trial and upheld the trial court's decision to not use the prior Louisiana driving while intoxicated conviction to apply the mandatory minimum sentencing provisions.
Using the logic of these two decisions, Judge Joannides concluded that Simpson's two prior Cali
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