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State v. Combs2/14/2003
[N0. 1857 - February 14, 2003]
Thomas Charles Combs pleaded no contest to attempted first-degree assault, and he was sentenced to a term of imprisonment. After his sentencing, Combs asked the superior court to issue a supplemental order barring the Department of Corrections from housing Combs in the same facility as Edwin Kent, another convicted prisoner who had assaulted Combs (by shooting him in the back) in 1996. The prosecuting attorney - an assistant district attorney, an employee of the Department of Law - told the court that the State did not object to the proposed order. The superior court then granted Combs's motion, amending the criminal judgment by adding a provision that bars the Department of Corrections from housing Combs and Kent in the same correctional facility.
Approximately five weeks later, another office within the Department of Law (the Central Office of the Criminal Division) challenged this portion of the judgment on behalf of the Department of Corrections. Relying on AS 33.30.061(a) and Rust v. State , the Central Office argued that the superior court had no authority to restrict the discretion of the Department of Corrections concerning where (and with whom) Combs would be imprisoned.
The superior court declined to delete the challenged provision from the judgment, and this appeal followed.
We agree with the State that the sentencing court had no authority to order the Department of Corrections to hold Combs and Kent in separate facilities. In Rust, our supreme court said:
We think it clear that the matter of a prisoner's classification, which encompasses designation of the prison facility to which the prisoner is to be confined, is committed to the administrative discretion of the [Department] of Corrections, and not to the sentencing courts of Alaska. We thus hold that the sentencing court does not have the authority to designate a particular prison facility in which a prisoner is to be confined. 582 P.2d at 137-38.
In an accompanying footnote, the supreme court added:
This conclusion reflects the principles which govern the powers of Alaska's judiciary in relation to those of the executive. In Public Defender Agency v. Superior Ct., Third Judicial District, 534 P.2d 947, 950 (Alaska 1975), we articulated these principles in the following manner:
When an act is committed to executive discretion, the exercise of that discretion within constitutional bounds is not subject to the control or review of the courts. To interfere with that discretion would be a violation of the doctrine of separation of powers. Id. at 138 n.11.
Combs argues that, because the superior court did not direct the Department of Corrections to hold Combs in a "particular prison facility", the superior court's order does not violate Rust. But this interpretation of Rust is too narrow. As can be seen from the excerpt quoted above, Rust stands for the broader proposition that a sentencing court can not interfere in any aspect of a prisoner's classification.
Although prisoner classification "encompasses designation of the prison facility to which the prisoner is to be confined", this is but one aspect of the Department's classification authority. The Department's authority includes other matters as well. See, for instance, LaBarbera v. State, 598 P.2d 947 (Alaska 1979), where the supreme court held that a sentencing court infringed the authority of the Department of Corrections when the court ordered the Department to release a prisoner to a particular residential rehabilitative program. The supreme court stated that a sentencing court "has authority to designate ... a part
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