NOTICE: This opinion is subject to formal
correction before publication in the Pacific
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IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF THE STATE OF ALASKA
FRANCIS E. WILLIAMS, )
) Court of Appeals No. A-4608
Appellant, ) Trial Court No. 4FA-92-813 Cr
)
v. )
) O P I N I O N
STATE OF ALASKA, )
)
Appellee. ) [No. 1296 - June 4, 1993]
________________________________)
Appeal from the District Court, Fourth Judi
cial District, Fairbanks, H.E. Crutchfield,
Judge.
Appearances: Geoffry B. Wildridge, Assistant
Public Defender, Fairbanks, and John B.
Salemi, Public Defender, Anchorage, for Appel
lant. Jacquelyn L. Parris, Assistant
District Attorney, Harry L. Davis, District
Attorney, Fairbanks, and Charles E. Cole,
Attorney General, Juneau, for Appellee.
Before: Bryner, Chief Judge, and Coats and
Mannheimer, Judges.
MANNHEIMER, Judge.
Francis E. Williams appeals his conviction for driving
while intoxicated, AS 28.35.030(a), challenging the legality of
the traffic stop that led to his arrest. We affirm.
In the early morning of March 23, 1992, Alaska State
Trooper Theodore Norris stopped Williams for having a broken
taillight that was emitting white light to the rear. At the
later suppression hearing, Williams conceded that his taillight
lens had been broken, but he asserted that he had painted the
exposed bulbs red so that they would continue to emit red light.
District Court Judge H.E. Crutchfield recessed the hearing to
personally examine Williams's vehicle. When court resumed
session, Judge Crutchfield stated that he had viewed the
taillight assembly (the lens and the bulbs), that two bulbs were
exposed by the broken lens, and that the inside bulb had only a
little red paint: less than ten percent of that bulb was covered.
Judge Crutchfield further found that the taillight assembly would
emit some white light if viewed from the side or from a vantage
point above or below the height of the taillight assembly.
On appeal, Williams argues that, even if a little white
light was visible from his taillights, his vehicle still complied
with the law and the trooper's act of stopping him was therefore
unjustified. At the time Williams was stopped, 13 AAC 04.145(e)
stated:
A lighting device or reflector mounted
on the rear of a vehicle must display or
reflect a red color, except the stop light or
other signal device which may be red or
yellow, and the light illuminating the
registration plate and the light emitted by
backup lights must be white. No backup light
may be turned on when the vehicle is in
forward motion.
Williams argues that, while this regulation clearly requires
taillights to emit red light, it does not prohibit taillights
that emit red plus some other color (for example, white).
Therefore, Williams claims, even if his taillight emitted some
white light, his vehicle still conformed to this regulation
because the taillight emitted red as well.
We, however, interpret 13 AAC 04.145(e) to require that
taillights emit only red light. The regulation is designed to
create a "code" of vehicle lighting, a set of visual signals that
drivers can rely upon to judge and predict the motion of other
vehicles. Under 13 AAC 04.145(e), with the exception of license
plate illumination, a vehicle is to display white light to the
rear in one and only one circumstance: when the vehicle has been
shifted into reverse gear. If the regulation were interpreted as
Williams suggests, highway safety would be jeopardized: drivers
would not have an unambiguous visual cue to help them recognize
when another vehicle was backing up or preparing to back up.
We recognize that, since the time of Williams's
offense, the Department of Public Safety has amended 13 AAC
04.145 by adding a subsection (f) that makes this rule of law
clearer:
No person may operate a motor vehicle on
a roadway with any color of light illuminated
other than the colors specified in this
chapter.
One could argue that the enactment of this additional subsection
indicates that the Department did not intend the prior version of
the regulation to restrict taillights to the single color red.
We also recognize that, when a regulation is reasonably
susceptible of two conflicting interpretations, this ambiguity
must be resolved in favor of a criminal defendant. Dixson v.
United States, 465 U.S. 482, 491; 104 S.Ct. 1172, 1177;
79 L.Ed.2d 458 (1984); Cassell v. State, 645 P.2d 219, 222
(Alaska App. 1982).
However, a court is obliged to avoid construing
statutes in a way that leads to patently absurd results or to
defeat of the obvious legislative purpose behind the statute.
Sherman v. Holiday Construction Co., 435 P.2d 16, 19 (Alaska
1967); Wylie v. State, 797 P.2d 651, 657 (Alaska App. 1990);
Belarde v. Anchorage, 634 P.2d 567, 568 (Alaska App. 1981). We
conclude that Williams's suggested interpretation of 13 AAC
04.145(e) would defeat the obvious purpose of the regulation,
which is to assure drivers that white light emitting from a
vehicle's taillights means only one thing: that the vehicle is in
reverse.
Because the evidence (taken in the light most favorable
to the district court's ruling) establishes that Williams's
taillight was emitting at least some white light, it follows that
Trooper Norris had probable cause to make a traffic stop. The
judgement of the district court is AFFIRMED.
