Alaska Court Explains Defects In Instruction On Maintaining A Building Or Structure For Drug Distribution (Alaska)

In ruling on the defendant’s habeas petition Maness v. State [excerpt after the jump] reiterated the defects in the instruction on the elements of the charge.  However, habeas relief was denied because Maness failed to satisfy the prejudice prong of his ineffective counsel claim.

Maness v. State, (Alaska Ct. App., No. A-9916, No. 5555, Jan. 13, 2010)
As this Court acknowledged when we decided Maness's direct appeal, the jury instruction that defined the elements of the crime was indeed faulty: it failed to tell the jurors that the State was required to prove that Maness's prohibited use of the structure (unlawfully keeping or distributing a controlled substance) was a "substantial purpose" of the structure, and that this prohibited use was "continuous to some degree".

However, as we have already explained, we concluded that the flawed jury instruction did not require us to reverse Maness's conviction of this offense. Maness, 49 P.3d at 1133. Instead, we concluded that the failure of the jury instruction to mention these two elements was harmless -- because the evidence presented at Maness's trial undisputedly established that a substantial amount of Maness's living space was devoted to growing marijuana plants, and because the presence of this extensive growing operation established that Maness's use of his apartment for this unlawful purpose was sufficiently continuous to satisfy the Dawson test. Id.
. . .
In our decision of Maness's direct appeal, we neglected to explicitly state what standard we were applying when we concluded that the two omissions in the jury instruction were harmless. However, our discussion of this point -- and, in particular, our description of the evidence at Maness's trial -- shows that the errors in the jury instruction were harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.

To reiterate, the challenged jury instruction was flawed in two respects. First, the instruction did not ask the jury to find whether keeping or distributing a controlled substance was a "substantial purpose" of Maness's residence. Second, the instruction did not ask the jury whether this prohibited use was "continuous to some degree".

But in our decision of Maness's direct appeal, we summarized the trial court record by stating that it was "uncontested that Maness was growing a substantial amount of marijuana" in his residence. Maness, 49 P.3d at 1133. We further stated that, "[given the] evidence … that Maness used a substantial amount of his living space to grow [the] marijuana[,] … it seems apparent that the presence of the marijuana in his residence was not a 'single, isolated occurrence of drug-related activity' but was [rather] a continuous growing operation." Id.

Given this trial court record, it is clear that the two errors in the jury instruction were harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. It necessarily follows that even if Maness could show that his trial attorneys were incompetent for failing to object to the faulty instruction, Maness can not satisfy the prejudice prong of the Risher test for ineffective assistance of counsel. Accordingly, his petition for post-conviction relief failed to present a prima facie case for relief on this issue.