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Hutchison v State (06/08/2001) ap-1747
Hutchison v State (06/08/2001) ap-1747
NOTICE
The text of this opinion can be corrected before the opinion is published in the
Pacific Reporter. Readers are encouraged to bring typographical or other formal
errors to the attention of the Clerk of the Appellate Courts:
303 K Street, Anchorage, Alaska 99501
Fax: (907) 264-0878
E-mail: corrections@appellate.courts.state.ak.us
IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF THE STATE OF ALASKA
GRANT T. HUTCHISON, )
) Court of Appeals No. A-7544
Appellant, ) Trial Court No. 2BA-99-015 Cr
)
v. )
) O P I N I O N
STATE OF ALASKA, )
)
Appellee. ) [No. 1747 C June 8, 2001]
)
Appeal from the Superior Court, Second Judicial District, Barrow, Michael I.
Jeffery, Judge.
Appearances: David K. Allen, Assistant Public Advocate, Fairbanks, and Brant G.
McGee, Public Advocate, Anchorage, for Appellant. John A. Scukanec, Assistant
Attorney General, Office of Special Prosecutions and Appeals, Anchorage, and Bruce
M. Botelho, Attorney General, Juneau, for Appellee.
Before: Coats, Chief Judge, and Mannheimer and Stewart, Judges.
MANNHEIMER, Judge.
We are asked to decide whether extreme intoxication can constitute a defense to a
charge of failure to appear under the former (pre-September 2000) version of AS
12.30.060. As this statute was worded prior to September 4, 2000, a defendant was
guilty of failing to appear if the defendant was released on bail and then
Awilfully@ failed to appear at a scheduled court date. Hutchison was charged with
violating this statute because he failed to attend his omnibus hearing. He
defended by asserting that he was so drunk on the night before the omnibus hearing
that he passed out and did not regain consciousness until the next afternoon.
The legislature has provided definitions for the four culpable mental states used
in Title 11 of the Alaska Statutes (see AS 11.81.900(a)(1)-(4)), but the
legislature has not defined Awilfully@. Definition of this term has been left to
common-law development through court decisions.
In this appeal, Hutchison urges us to construe Awilfully@ as being most equivalent
to the culpable mental state Aintentionally@ codified in AS 11.81.900(a)(1).
Hutchison favors this interpretation of the statute because, under AS
11.81.900(a)(1), intoxication is a potential defense when a statute requires proof
that the defendant acted Aintentionally@.
The State, on the other hand, urges us to construe Awilfully@ as being most
equivalent to the culpable mental state of Aknowingly@ codified in AS
11.81.900(a)(2). The State favors this interpretation because AS 11.81.900(a)(2)
contains a special clause stating that intoxication is not a defense when a
statute requires proof that the defendant acted Aknowingly@.
We have examined the legislative history of AS 12.30.060, as well as several cases
from other jurisdictions that address the issue of what constitutes a Awillful@
failure to appear.1 Based on our research, we agree with the State that the term
Awilfully@ (as used in the former version of our failure to appear statute) more
closely approximates the culpable mental state of Aknowingly@. This, however,
does not resolve Hutchison=s case. The question is not whether Aknowingly@ or
Aintentionally@ more closely approximates Awilfully@. Rather, the question is to
ascertain exactly what the legislature intended when it used the word Awilfully@.
We conclude that the most accurate way to translate Awilfully@ is to use the
current definition of Aknowingly@ but without the special intoxication clause (the
clause declaring that intoxication is not a defense). We therefore conclude that
extreme intoxication can be a defense to a charge of failure to appear under the
former version of the statute.
Underlying facts
Grant T. Hutchison was charged with felony driving while intoxicated in case
number 2BA-98-646 Cr. On November 3, 1998, Hutchison failed to appear for the
omnibus hearing in his case. Consequently, Hutchison was indicted for felony
failure to appear under AS 12.30.060(1). At the time of Hutchison=s indictment,
this statute forbade a person from Awilfully fail[ing] to appear before a court or
judicial officer as required@.2
Hutchison consented to a court trial in front of Superior Court Judge Michael I.
Jeffery. Hutchison=s defense was that he drank so much liquor on the night of
November 2nd that he passed out and did not regain consciousness until the next
afternoon C thus missing his omnibus hearing.
At the close of the trial, Judge Jeffery indicated that he found Hutchison=s
testimony to be credible, but he was not sure whether intoxication was a defense
to the charge. The problem was that the crime of failure to appear required proof
that the defendant acted Awilfully@. The legislature has defined the culpable
mental states of Aintentionally@, Aknowingly@, Arecklessly@, and Awith criminal
negligence@ (see AS 11.81.900(a)(1)-(4)), but the legislature has not defined the
culpable mental state of Awilfully@. Because of this, Judge Jeffery was uncertain
as to whether Hutchison=s drunken stupor had any relevance to his guilt:
[I]f this crime is an intent crime, a conscious intent crime, then I would have a
reasonable doubt that Mr. Hutchison=s conscious goal was not to come to court that
morning ... . On the other hand, if ... Aknowingly@ [is] the legal standard, then
I would find [Hutchison] guilty beyond a reasonable doubt because of the notice
[of the omnibus hearing] given during the arraignment, [and the] message received
through the [defense] attorney[.] [Hutchison] certainly was aware of the hearing,
and a sober person would have been aware that he needed to go to court the next
day.
Judge Jeffery asked the parties to submit briefs on the issue of whether
Awilfully@ required proof that the defendant acted with the intention of not
appearing in court on the scheduled date or whether, instead, Awilfully@ merely
required proof that the defendant knew about the court date and voluntarily failed
to appear. In other words, Judge Jeffery asked the parties to brief the question
of whether the statute required proof that the defendant acted Aintentionally@ or
only Aknowingly@. Judge Jeffery ultimately ruled that the applicable culpable
mental state was Aknowingly@.
The Alaska Legislature=s definition of Aknowingly@, AS 11.81.900(a)(2), contains a
clause regarding the effect of intoxication. This statute declares that Aa person
who is unaware of conduct or a circumstance of which the person would have been
aware had that person not been intoxicated acts knowingly with respect to that
conduct or circumstance@. In other words, if an intoxicated person fails to
perceive a circumstance or fails to be aware of the nature of their conduct, that
person will still be deemed to have acted Aknowingly@ if a sober person in the
same position would have perceived the circumstance or been aware of the nature of
the conduct.
As explained above, Judge Jeffery concluded that Aknowingly@ was the culpable
mental state that applies to the crime of failure to appear. And, based on the
intoxication clause in the statutory definition of Aknowingly@, Judge Jeffery
found Hutchison guilty of failure to appear.
The federal courts= construction of the corresponding federal statute, former 18
U.S.C. ' 3150
AS 12.30.060 was originally enacted in 1966 as part of the legislature=s revision
of Alaska=s bail statutes.3 When the House Judiciary Committee reported the bill
out of committee, it stated that the proposed revision of AS 12.30 was Ataken
almost exactly from a congressional bill to revise bail practices in the [federal]
courts.@4 Indeed, the phrasing of AS 12.30.060 C Awilfully fails to appear@ C
mirrors the language used in the corresponding section of the federal Bail Reform
Act of 1966, former 18 U.S.C. ' 3150.5
Because AS 12.30.060 is patterned after the federal Bail Reform Act, we have
examined how the federal courts interpreted that corresponding federal statute.
Among these decisions, one can find a number of differing (and sometimes
ambiguous) definitions of willfulness.
(a) Survey of the federal decisions
Essentially all of the federal decisions agree that Awilfully@, for purposes of
former 18 U.S.C. ' 3150, means that the defendant=s failure to appear was
Aknowing@ or Apurposeful@ or Adeliberate@ or Aintentional@. That is, even though
a defendant may have failed to appear as required, the defendant will not have
acted Awilfully@ if the failure to appear was the result of mistake or
inadvertence or good-faith but feckless efforts.6
For instance, in United States v. Wetzel, the Eighth Circuit declared that A[a]n
act is done wilfully if done voluntarily and with intent to do something the law
forbids; that is to say, with a purpose either to disobey or disregard the law.@7
In United States v. Smith, the Fifth Circuit stated that, to prove willfulness,
the government Amust prove that the defendant knowingly did an act which the law
forbids[,] ... purposely intending to violate the law.@8 In United States v.
Wilson, the Ninth Circuit said that willfulness requires Aa deliberate decision to
disobey the law@.9 The Ninth Circuit declared that the government must prove the
defendant=s Aspecific intent to do something the law forbids; a general intent to
commit the proscribed act is not enough.@10 And the court added that A[a]n act is
not willful if it is committed as a result of inadvertence or mistake.@11
According to the Seventh Circuit=s decision in United States v. Sherwood,
willfulness means that the defendant knew what he was doing, but it does not
require proof that the defendant knew that he was breaking the law.12 On the
other hand, in United States v. Wells, the First Circuit declared that willfulness
requires proof of the defendant=s Aspecific intent to do something the law
forbids; a general intent to commit the proscribed act is not enough.@13
(b) Summary of the federal decisions
With so many different phrasings, it is inevitable that some of these tests may be
somewhat in conflict with each other (and even be internally inconsistent). This
is partly due to the difficulty of crafting a single, all-purpose definition of a
concept that can prove surprisingly subtle. It is also partly due to the fact
that the crime of failure to appear involves an omission to perform a duty C for,
in such situations, the definition of Awillfulness@ must encompass not only the
need to prove the voluntariness or purposefulness of the defendant=s conduct, but
also the need to prove the defendant=s awareness of the duty in the first place.14
But although the federal decisions employ different paraphrasings of Awillfully@,
they virtually all agree that a defendant=s failure to appear is Awillful@ if, in
the absence of some legally recognized justification or excuse, the defendant
makes a deliberate decision to disobey a known obligation to appear in court.
(This includes instances of Awillful blindness@ C situations where the defendant
deliberately avoids finding out whether a court date has been scheduled.15)
Many of the federal decisions also describe the test as whether the defendant
Apurposely intend[ed] to violate the law@16, or whether the defendant acted with
the Aspecific intent to do something the law forbids@.17 Although this phrasing
may suggest that these courts view the offense of failure to appear as a Aspecific
intent@ crime, these courts do not require proof that the defendant acted with the
intention of causing a particular result, or acted with knowledge of a particular
fact (other than the defendant=s obligation to appear in court).18 Rather, it
appears that this phrasing is an attempt to clarify that even when a defendant
consciously decides not to appear in court, the defendant will not be guilty of
failure to appear if the defendant did not purposely disregard their obligation to
the court C e.g., if there is some justification or excuse for the defendant=s
decision.
None of these cases require the government to prove that the defendant acted
Aintentionally@ in the way this word is defined in AS 11.81.900(a)(1). As used in
Title 11 of the Alaska Statutes, the culpable mental state Aintentionally@ refers
to a conscious effort or purpose to cause a particular result.19 None of the
federal cases require the government to prove that a non-appearing defendant acted
for the purpose of achieving a particular improper result (such as defeating the
administration of justice, gaining a tactical advantage in the litigation, etc.).
It is enough that the defendant deliberately (and without justification or excuse)
decided not to honor their obligation to the court.
Pertinent state court decisions
Several state courts have also considered what constitutes a Awillful@ failure to
appear, and they have reached essentially the same conclusion as the federal
courts.20
The Connecticut Court of Appeals declared that, to prove a Awillful@ failure to
appear, the government must prove Aeither that the defendant received and
deliberately ignored a notice to appear[,] or that he intentionally embarked on a
course of conduct designed to prevent him from receiving such notice.@21
Similarly, the Missouri Court of Appeals held that a failure to appear is willful
if the defendant, Aknowing of the trial setting, intentionally and deliberately
failed to appear for trial.@22
The Illinois Court of Appeals stated that a failure to appear is Awillful@ if it
is done Aknowingly@ C which, according to the court, means that the defendant,
Awhile not having an actual intent to accomplish a specific wrongful purpose, is
consciously aware of the nature of his conduct or of the result which will (or
which is practically certain to) be caused@.23 The Illinois court added, however,
that A[a]n innocent or excusable failure to surrender ... is not punishable.@24
And the California Court of Appeal held that, in the context of failure to appear,
A[t]he word >willfully= ... implies simply a purpose or willingness to commit the
act, or make the omission referred to. It does not require any intent to violate
[the] law, or to injure another, or to acquire any advantage. ... Thus,
>willfully= ... implies a purpose or willingness to commit the act and[,] although
it does not require an evil intent, it implies that the person knows what he is
doing, intends to do what he is doing and is a free agent.@2526
Prior Alaska cases defining Awillfulness@
These federal and state decisions construing what is meant by a Awillful@ failure
to appear are generally consistent with Alaska decisions construing Awillfulness@
for purposes of the law of contempt. Indirect contempt (i.e., contempt of court
not committed in the judge=s presence) requires proof that the defendant acted
Awillfully@ when the defendant violated the court=s order. Alaska cases on this
subject establish the rule that a defendant acts willfully if the defendant is
aware of, and knowingly violates, the terms of a court order without lawful
justification or excuse. The government need not prove that the defendant acted
with the specific intent to violate a court order or flout the authority of the
court:
For an act of contempt to be willful, the defendant must have been aware of the
requirements of the court order, and the defendant must knowingly violate the
court=s order. [Although some earlier cases seem] to suggest that Awillfully@
might require proof of a specific intent to violate a court order[, other] case
law clarifies that [what is] required is an intentional act which the defendant
knows violates the court order, not an act motivated by the intent to violate a
court order.
O=Brannon v. State, 812 P.2d 222, 228 (Alaska App. 1991).
However, even when a defendant has knowingly violated the terms of a court order,
the defendant may still defend C that is, may negate the element of Awillfulness@
C by showing that there was some lawful justification or excuse for failing to
comply with the order. As the Alaska Supreme Court declared in Johansen v. State:
[When we speak of disobedience] of a lawful order of the court[, this] connotes
more than the mere failure to comply with [the] order. The word Adisobey@ has the
connotation of wilfully failing to comply, without some lawful or reasonable
excuse for not complying. If such an excuse ... is established, there can be no
contempt of the authority of the court.
491 P.2d 759, 767 (Alaska 1971) (footnote omitted). Thus, for purposes of
adjudicating a charge of criminal contempt,
[a] willful failure to comply with an order occurs when [the] failure is not due
to inability, but to purposefulness, bad faith[,] or fault of [the] petitioner as
distinguished from accidental, inadvertent[,] or negligent conduct.
Continental Insurance Companies v. Bayless & Roberts, Inc., 548 P.2d 398, 407
(Alaska 1976) (footnotes omitted).
Our interpretation of the phrase Awilfully fails to appear@ in former AS 12.30.060
Our duty when construing a statute is to ascertain and implement the intent of the
legislature.27 As explained above, the Alaska Legislature patterned AS 12.30.060
after former 18 U.S.C. ' 3150. Federal courts construing this federal statute
have concluded that a defendant willfully fails to appear if, in the absence of
some legally recognized justification or excuse, the defendant makes a deliberate
decision to disobey a known obligation to appear in court (including instances of
Awillful blindness@, where the defendant engages in conduct designed to avoid
notice of the court date). State courts have generally reached the same
conclusion, and this interpretation is consistent with prior Alaska decisions
defining the willfulness needed to prove contempt. We therefore conclude that
this is what the Alaska Legislature intended when it enacted AS 12.30.060.
Having reached this conclusion, we further conclude that the term Awilfully@ used
in AS 12.30.060 is closer to the Title 11 culpable mental state of Aknowingly@, AS
11.81.900(a)(2), than it is to the culpable mental state of Aintentionally@, AS
11.81.900(a)(1). As we noted earlier, even though several courts have equated
willfulness with a Aspecific intent to do something the law forbids@, these courts
do not require the government to prove that the defendant acted Aintentionally@ as
this word is defined in AS 11.81.900(a)(1). That is, the government need not
prove that the defendant acted with the conscious aim or purpose of causing a
particular result. Rather, the government must prove only that the defendant=s
purpose was to disobey or disregard the court=s order to appear. Among the
culpable mental states defined in Title 11, this is closest to the concept of
acting Aknowingly@ as defined in AS 11.81.900(a)(2) C acting with Aaware[ness]
that [one=s] conduct is of [the] nature@ described by the provision of law
defining the offense.
The State argues that once we have reached this conclusion, it is obvious that
intoxication is no defense to a charge of failure to appear. The State relies on
the special Aintoxication@ clause in the definition of Aknowingly@, AS
11.81.900(a)(2):
[A] person who is unaware of conduct or a circumstance of which the person would
have been aware had that person not been intoxicated acts knowingly with respect
to that conduct or circumstance[.]
Under this clause of the statute, unawareness caused by intoxication is deemed to
be awareness for purposes of assessing whether a defendant acted Aknowingly@.
That is, if a defendant engages in the type of conduct proscribed by a criminal
statute, and if the defendant is unaware of the nature of their conduct because of
intoxication, and if a sober person in the defendant=s position would have been
aware that their conduct was of that nature, then the defendant will be deemed to
have acted knowingly.28
Under the Aintoxication@ clause of AS 11.81.900(a)(2), a defendant=s voluntary
intoxication is no defense to a charge of knowingly failing to appear in court.
But at the time of Hutchison=s offense, the statute did not speak of Aknowing@
failures to appear; rather, it forbade willful failures to appear. For this
reason, the true question is not whether intoxication is a potential defense to a
charge of knowingly failing to appear, but rather whether intoxication is a
potential defense to a charge of Awilfully@ failing to appear.
The failure to appear statute, AS 12.30.060, was enacted in 1966. The legislature
could not have been contemplating the intoxication clause of AS 11.81.900(a)(2)
when it drafted the failure to appear statute because Alaska=s current criminal
code was not drafted until 1978. More to the point, the intoxication clause in
the definition of Aknowingly@ was the legislature=s eleventh-hour addition to the
criminal code in 1980. The drafters of our criminal code had recommended the
approach taken by the Model Penal Code: intoxication would be no defense when a
crime required proof that the defendant acted Arecklessly@, but intoxication would
be a defense when a crime required proof that the defendant acted Aintentionally@
or Aknowingly@.29 The legislature rejected this recommendation and inserted an
intoxication clause into the definition of Aknowingly@ C thus leaving
Aintentionally@ the only culpable mental state that can be negated by voluntary
intoxication.
All of this was years in the future when our legislature enacted the failure to
appear statute. As explained earlier, AS 12.30.060 was patterned after the
corresponding provision of the federal Bail Reform Act, former 18 U.S.C. ' 3150.
Thus, when the legislature used the term Awilfully@ in AS 12.30.060, it most
likely contemplated that this term would be interpreted in the same way that
Awilfully@ was being used in the corresponding federal statute. We therefore must
examine whether intoxication was recognized as a defense to failure to appear
under the federal statute.
Although there is little case law on this subject, the few cases we have found
suggest that intoxication, if extreme enough, was a defense to a federal charge of
willfully failing to appear. In United States v. Smith, the Fifth Circuit
indicated that extreme intoxication or duress could negate the element of
willfulness.30 Similarly, in Williams v. United States, the District of Columbia
Court of Appeals recognized that extreme or Aincapacitating@ intoxication could be
a defense to a charge of willfully failing to appear.31 And in United States v.
Cohen, the Fifth Circuit reversed a failure to appear conviction because the trial
judge instructed the jury that the defendant could be convicted if the jurors
concluded that the defendant was at Afault@ for failing to receive notice of the
scheduled court date.32 The court declared that it was not enough for the
government to prove that it was the defendant=s fault that he failed to find out
about the court date. Rather, the court said, the government was obliged to prove
that the defendant
acted ... intentionally to prevent the notice to appear from reaching him. [A
defendant] may not be convicted if his failure to receive notice was because of
honest mistake [or even] misunderstanding or accident which is his fault.
Cohen, 450 F.2d at 1022.
We note that one of the state court decisions discussed earlier in this opinion,
People v. McCaughey33, declares that intoxication is not a defense to a charge of
willfully failing to appear. However, from the court=s explanation of its
decision, it appears that the court=s true rationale was not the defendant=s
intoxication per se, but rather the fact that the defendant had acted in willful
disregard of his obligation to appear:
[McCaughey] had been released on his own recognizance[.] ... [He] knew [that] he
had the responsibility to appear in court on February 24, 1967, yet [he] left the
area to go to San Francisco, became involved with the police, made no effort to
appear[,] and launched upon a course of conduct designed to avoid his appearance
in court. The term Awillfully@ as used in section 1319.4 [of the] Penal Code ...
implies merely the general intent not to appear. [The] defendant, well aware of
his responsibility to appear, knew he was avoiding the same and intended to do so.
Id. at 686. In other words, the defendant in McCaughey engaged in an entire
course of conduct which, although it may have included a drinking binge, more
importantly demonstrated a purposeful disregard of his obligation to appear.
Based on this case law, we conclude that extreme intoxication C intoxication that
incapacitates a defendant or that blots out a defendant=s memory of the required
court appearance C constitutes a defense to a charge of Awilfully fail[ing] to
appear@ under the pre-September 2000 version of AS 12.30.060.
Conclusion
We now turn to the facts of this case. Hutchison testified that, on the night
before his scheduled omnibus hearing, he drank so much that he passed out and did
not awaken until the next afternoon. Based on this testimony, Judge Jeffery
declared that he Aha[d] a reasonable doubt that Mr. Hutchison=s conscious goal was
not to come to court that morning@. If Hutchison did not act with the conscious
purpose of avoiding his obligation to appear, he did not act Awilfully@ for
purposes of the former version of AS 12.30.060. Therefore, based on Judge
Jeffery=s evaluation of the evidence, Hutchison should have been acquitted.
The judgement of the superior court is REVERSED.
1 This author will use the spellings Awillful@ and Awillfully@ unless quoting
directly from a source that spells the word with one fewer l=s.
2 The statute has since been amended. Effective September 4, 2000, the
legislature substituted Aknowingly@ for Awilfully@. See SLA 2000, ch. 124, ' 5.
3 See SLA 1966, ch. 20, ' 1.
4 See 1966 House Journal 110-11.
5 See Public Law 89-465, ' 3(a). In October 1984, Congress repealed 18 U.S.C. '
3150 and recodified its provisions in 18 U.S.C. ' 3146. (See Public Law 98-473,
Title II, ch. 1, ' 203(a).) In the new version of the statute, Congress discarded
Awilfully@ in favor of a new culpable mental state. 18 U.S.C. ' 3146(a) now
defines the offense as Aknowingly ... fail[ing] to appear@.
6 See generally, Martin M. Heit, Annotation: Failure of a Person, Released
Pursuant to [the] Provisions of [the] Federal Bail Reform Act of 1966[,] to Make
Appearance as Subjecting [that] Person to [the] Penalty Provided for by 18
U.S.C.A. ' 3150, 66 A.L.R.Fed. 668 (1984).
7 514 F.2d 175, 177 (8th Cir. 1975).
8 548 F.2d 545, 549 (5th Cir. 1977).
9 631 F.2d 118, 119 (9th Cir. 1980).
10 Id.
11 Id. See also United States v. Washington, 578 F.2d 256, 259 (9th Cir. 1978)
(willfulness requires proof that the defendant Apurposely intended to violate the
law@ when the defendant failed to appear). And see United States v. Bourassa, 411
F.2d 69, 74 (10th Cir. 1969) (willful failure to appear means a voluntary non-
appearance done for the purpose of violating the law; it does not include failures
to appear attributable to mistake, accident, or the failure of good-faith
efforts).
12 770 F.2d 650, 654 (7th Cir. 1985).
13 766 F.2d 12, 20 (1st Cir. 1985).
14 See Hentzner v. State, 613 P.2d 821 (Alaska 1980), where the Alaska Supreme
Court held that a defendant could not be convicted of Awilfully@ failing to
register a proposed investment contract with the Division of Banking and
Securities unless the State proved that the defendant was aware that he might be
engaged in wrongdoing C i.e., that the defendant was at least reckless regarding
the possibility that the law required the offering to be registered. It was not
enough, the court ruled, for the State to prove merely that the defendant A[was]
aware of what he [was] doing@ or that the defendant Aintentionally [did] the acts
which are prohibited by law@. Id. at 825.
15 See Weaver v. United States, 37 F.3d 1411, 1413 (9th Cir. 1994) (failure to
appear is established if the government proves that the defendant has engaged Ain
a course of conduct designed to avoid notice of [the scheduled court] date@);
United States v. Martinez, 890 F.2d 1088, 1093 (10th Cir. 1989); United States v.
Yates, 698 F.2d 828, 830 (6th Cir. 1983); United States v. Bright, 541 F.2d 471,
476-77 (5th Cir. 1976); United States v. Cohen, 450 F.2d 1019, 1022 (5th Cir.
1971) (a defendant can be convicted of failure to appear if the government proves
that the defendant Aacted ... intentionally to prevent the notice to appear from
reaching him@).
16 United States v. Washington, 578 F.2d 256, 259 (9th Cir. 1978); see also United
States v. Smith, 548 F.2d 545, 549 (5th Cir. 1977); United States v. Bourassa, 411
F.2d 69, 74 (10th Cir. 1969).
17 United States v. Wells, 766 F.2d 12, 20 (1st Cir. 1985); United States v.
Wilson, 631 F.2d 118, 119 (9th Cir. 1980); United States v. Wetzel, 514 F.2d 175,
177 (8th Cir. 1975).
18 See the discussion of Aspecific intent@ crimes in Wayne R. LaFave and Austin W.
Scott, Jr., Substantive Criminal Law (1986), '' 3.5(a), (b), & (e), Volume 1, pp.
302-09, 313-16.
19 See the legislative commentary to AS 11.81.900(a): 1978 Senate Journal, Supp.
No. 47 (June 12), pp. 139-143.
20 See generally, Karen L. Ellmore, Annotation: State Statutes Making Default on
Bail a Separate Criminal Offense, 63 A.L.R.4th 1064 (1988).
21 State v. Candito, 493 A.2d 250, 252 (Conn. App. 1985).
22 State v. Charles, 538 S.W.2d 944, 946 (Mo. App. 1976).
23 People v. Lynn, 412 N.E.2d 15, 18 (Ill. App. 1980).
24 Id.
25 People v. McCaughey, 67 Cal.Rptr. 683, 685 (Cal. App. 1968).
26 See also People v. Davis, 576 N.E.2d 510, 513 (Ill. App. 1991) (ABefore
probation can be revoked based upon the failure to [pay a fine or restitution], it
is ... incumbent upon the State to prove that the defendant willfully refused to
pay. ... Willful failure to pay means a voluntary, conscious and intentional
failure.@); Lambert v. Commonwealth, 367 S.E.2d 745, 747 (Va. App. 1988) (a
prisoner=s failure to return from a furlough or, alternatively, to contact local
police is not sufficient to support a conviction under a statute that defines the
crime in terms of a willful failure to do the prescribed act; the prosecution must
prove Athat the failure to act was intentional or by design@).
27 See Millman v. State, 841 P.2d 190, 194 (Alaska App. 1992).
28 See Abruska v. State, 705 P.2d 1261, 1263-66 (Alaska App. 1982); Neitzel v.
State, 655 P.2d 325, 330-31(Alaska App. 1982). In Abruska, we noted that the
legislature, by enacting the intoxication clauses of AS 11.81.900(a)(2) and
900(a)(3), Ahad foreclosed evidence of intoxication to show diminished capacity as
to all offenses except those which required [proof of] intent to cause a result as
the mens rea.@ 705 P.2d at 1263.
29 See Neitzel v. State, 655 P.2d 325, 330-31(Alaska App. 1982); see also Wayne R.
LaFave and Austin W. Scott, Jr., Substantive Criminal Law (1986), '' 4.10(a)-(c),
Volume 1, pp. 549-557 (discussing the relationship between intoxication and
criminal responsibility, and stating the general rule that intoxication can be a
defense to crimes that require proof of the defendant=s intention or knowledge,
but not to crimes that require only proof of recklessness).
30 548 F.2d 545, 549 (5th Cir. 1977).
31 331 A.2d 341, 343 (D.C. App. 1975).
32 450 F.2d 1019, 1021-22 (5th Cir. 1971).
33 67 Cal.Rptr. 683 (Cal. App. 1968).
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