Jordan v. Alaska

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Police entered the defendant Antonio Jordan’s property and found 15 marijuana plants, which when stripped and dried yielded over a pound and a half of marijuana. At trial, the court excluded the defendant’s testimony that he believed he possessed less than four ounces of marijuana (the statutory limit) and failed to instruct the jury that it had to find a culpable mental state with regard to the marijuana’s weight. The jury convicted the defendant of possessing at least four ounces, a class C felony. On appeal, the court of appeals held that the trial court erred both by barring the defendant’s testimony about his subjective belief and by omitting a mental state element from the jury instructions. But finding these errors harmless, the court affirmed the defendant’s conviction. Defendant argued on appeal to the Alaska Supreme Court (for the first time) that the alleged errors at trial were structural errors. The Supreme Court agreed conditionally and in part, holding that omitting from jury instructions a contested element of an offense was structural error. Furthermore, the Court held that the restriction on the defendant’s testimony in this case was not harmless beyond a reasonable doubt, though the Court did not reach the question whether it was structural error. “Our decision of these issues, however, assumes that the defendant’s possession of marijuana in a greenhouse on his residential property should be afforded the same constitutional protections given to his possession of marijuana in the home. Whether this is a legitimate assumption was not decided in either the superior court or the court of appeals.” The Court reversed the court of appeals and remanded to the superior court to consider in the first instance whether the constitutional protections applied. View "Jordan v. Alaska" on Justia Law