 |
 |
to fill out a simple form to connect to DUI Lawyers in your area.
|
|
|
|
|
BILLMAN v. MUNICIPALITY OF ANCHORAGE3/13/1998
The two defendants, Timothy Billman and Tae K. Kang, were convicted of driving while intoxicated, Anchorage Municipal Code 9.28.020(A). On appeal, they assert that they were not brought to trial within the time limits of Alaska's speedy trial rule, Criminal Rule 45, and thus the charges against them should be dismissed. The crucial issue in this appeal is the meaning of an order that this court issued on January 12, 1996, dealing with the hundreds of cases (including Billman's and Kang's) that were held in abeyance pending our decision of State v. Zerkel, File No. A-5773. In particular, the issue is whether our January 12th order returned jurisdiction over the defendants' cases to the district court. We agree with Billman and Kang that this order returned jurisdiction of their cases to the district court, thus restarting the defendants' speedy trial calculation under Criminal Rule 45. However, we also conclude that the defendants' scheduled trial date of July 17, 1996 was within the time limits of Rule 45. We therefore affirm the defendants' convictions.
Billman and Kang were each arrested for driving while intoxicated; they submitted to breath tests which showed their blood-alcohol levels to be .10 percent or higher. Based on these breath-test results, the Department of Public Safety took administrative action against both defendants' driver's licenses.
At the same time, the Municipality of Anchorage was pursuing criminal charges against Billman and Kang for driving while intoxicated. The two defendants asked the district court to dismiss the DWI charges on double jeopardy grounds; they asserted that the suspension of their driver's licenses constituted a punishment for their acts of driving while intoxicated, and therefore the double jeopardy clause prohibited the government
from trying to punish them again by pursuing the criminal prosecutions.
The district court agreed with the two defendants and ordered the DWI charges dismissed. The Municipality of Anchorage appealed the dismissals to this court. Because we were already considering the same double jeopardy issue in a group of consolidated cases now known as State v. Zerkel, we held the Municipality's appeals in abeyance pending our decision of Zerkel.
Ultimately, in State v. Zerkel, 900 P.2d 744 (Alaska App. 1995), this court held that the administrative suspension or revocation of a driver's license does not constitute a "punishment" for double jeopardy purposes — and thus the government can prosecute a defendant for driving while intoxicated (or breath-test refusal) even after the government has taken administrative action against the defendant's driver's license. However, the Municipality's appeals in Billman's and Kang's cases were still held in abeyance pending the Alaska Supreme Court's action on a petition for hearing (that is, a petition for discretionary review) in Zerkel.
On December 4, 1995, the Alaska Supreme Court denied hearing in Zerkel. Five weeks later, on January 12, 1996, this court issued an order dealing with all of the DWI and breath-test refusal cases that had been held in abeyance pending a final decision in Zerkel. In Paragraph 2(a) of that order, we addressed "all cases [like Billman's and Kang's] where criminal charges were dismissed based on a trial court ruling that administrative suspension or revocation of the defendant's driver's license barred a later prosecution for a related driving offense":
hese cases shall be REMANDED to the trial courts for further consideration in light of this court's decision in Zerkel. Any previously filed motion for stay that has not already been granted shall be deemed to have been granted nunc pro tun
Page 1 2 3 Alaska DUI Attorneys
DUI Lawyers
|
| |
to fill out a simple form to connect to DUI Lawyers in your area.
|
|