Opinion
Court of Appeals No. A-12284 No. 6535
11-01-2017
NATHANIAL E. HONEYCUTT, Appellant, v. STATE OF ALASKA, Appellee.
Appearances: Olena Kalytiak Davis, Attorney at Law, Anchorage, under contract with the Office of Public Advocacy, Anchorage, for the Appellant. Michal Stryszak, Assistant Attorney General, Office of Criminal Appeals, Anchorage, and Jahna Lindemuth, Attorney General, Juneau, for the Appellee.
NOTICE Memorandum decisions of this Court do not create legal precedent. See Alaska Appellate Rule 214(d) and Paragraph 7 of the Guidelines for Publication of Court of Appeals Decisions (Court of Appeals Order No. 3). Accordingly, this memorandum decision may not be cited as binding authority for any proposition of law. Trial Court No. 3KN-14-1295 CR
MEMORANDUM OPINION
Appeal from the District Court, Third Judicial District, Kenai, Anna M. Moran, Judge. Appearances: Olena Kalytiak Davis, Attorney at Law, Anchorage, under contract with the Office of Public Advocacy, Anchorage, for the Appellant. Michal Stryszak, Assistant Attorney General, Office of Criminal Appeals, Anchorage, and Jahna Lindemuth, Attorney General, Juneau, for the Appellee. Before: Mannheimer, Chief Judge, Allard, Judge, and Suddock, Superior Court Judge. Judge ALLARD.
Sitting by assignment made pursuant to Article IV, Section 16 of the Alaska Constitution and Administrative Rule 24(d).
Following a bench trial, Nathanial E. Honeycutt was convicted of failing to register as a sex offender based on evidence that he moved out of his registered residence and failed to update his address with the sex offender registry within one business day as required by the regulations. This evidence included (1) testimony from his wife indicating that Honeycutt had been kicked out of the registered residence more than a month before he updated his registry address; (2) testimony from his sister-in-law that Honeycutt had been told that he could not return to the residence weeks before he updated his registry address; (3) evidence that Honeycutt obtained a replacement identification card with his new address weeks before he updated his registry with that address; and (4) Honeycutt's own admission to an officer prior to updating his registry address that he knew that he could not return to his registered residence.
AS 11.56.840(a); AS 12.63.010(c); 13 Alaska Administrative Code 09.040(b).
On appeal, Honeycutt asserts that admission of his inculpatory statement violated the corpus delicti doctrine because, according to Honeycutt, his statement was uncorroborated by any other evidence. This claim is frivolous. As is clear from the preceding paragraph, there was substantial evidence corroborating Honeycutt's admission that he failed to update his registry address within one business day of acquiring the knowledge that he would not be returning to his registered address. There is no question that the corpus delicti doctrine was satisfied in this case.
See Langevin v. State, 258 P.3d 866, 870-71 (Alaska App. 2011) (explaining that the doctrine of corpus delicti requires the State to present "independent evidence tending to show that the charged crime did, in fact, occur). --------
Accordingly, we AFFIRM the judgment of the district court.