Groom v. State

551 P.3d 567

Scott Abraham GROOM, Appellant,

v.STATE of Alaska, Appellee.

Court of Appeals No. A-13288

Court of Appeals of Alaska.

May 31, 2024

Appeal from the Superior Court, Third Judicial District, Anchorage, Kevin M. Saxby, Judge. Trial Court No. 3AN-13-05483 CR

Kelly R. Taylor, Assistant Public Defender, and Samantha Cherot, Public Defender, Anchorage, for the Appellant.

Diane L. Wendlandt, Assistant Attorney General, Office of Criminal Appeals, Anchorage, and Treg R. Taylor, Attorney General, Juneau, for the Appellee.

Before: Allard, Chief Judge, and Wollenberg and Harbison, Judges.

OPINION

Judge HARBISON, writing for the Court.

Scott Abraham Groom was convicted of one count of scheme to defraud and was ordered to pay $259,881.12 in restitution.¹ On appeal, Groom contends that the restitution order was issued in violation of his right to a jury trial under both the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution and Article I, Section 11 of the Alaska Constitution.² According to Groom, these constitutional provisions prevent a court from relying on any facts not proven to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt when the court issues a restitution order in a criminal case. Groom also contends that the superior court erred by assigning him responsibility for the full amount of restitution while limiting his co-defendant’s restitution liability to the amount specified in her cooperation agreement with the State, For the reasons explained in this opinion, we reject Groom’s claims of error and affirm the superior court’s restitution order.

Background facts and proceedings

Groom was convicted of engaging in conduct constituting a scheme to obtain over $10,000 in state funds by "false or fraudulent pretense, representation, or promise" and obtaining funds in accordance with this scheme.³ To prove its case at trial, the State presented evidence that Groom and his codefendant, Laurayne Fischer, submitted false claims to the Alaska Division of Risk Management (the Division) requesting reimbursement for medical treatment Fischer purportedly provided to Groom.

Groom had been entitled, under a workers’ compensation settlement agreement, to be reimbursed by the Division for the cost of certain medical treatment. Over a period of approximately two and a half years, Fischer filled out medical claim forms stating that she had provided treatment to Groom that she had not, in fact, provided. Groom faxed the claim forms to the Division, and the Division paid Fischer as requested. Fischer and Groom then shared the reimbursement proceeds.

The State filed criminal charges against Fischer and Groom for this conduct, and a grand jury returned an indictment charging Fischer and Groom with multiple felony offenses.

Prior to Groom’s trial, Fischer entered into a comprehensive cooperation and plea agreement with the State. Fischer agreed to plead guilty to a single consolidated count of second-degree theft and to accept joint and sev- eral liability with Groom for $20,391.46 in restitution. As part of the deal, she also agreed to testify against Groom at trial. Under the terms of the agreement, Fischer’s liability was capped at the agreed upon restitution amount, "even if … Groom [was] found liable for a larger amount of restitution by a State of Alaska Superior Court."

Groom’s case proceeded to trial, and the jury found Groom guilty of all but one count of the indictment. Groom contested the award of restitution, arguing that the evidence was unreliable and insufficient to support the State’s request, and that any restitution against Groom should be limited to the amount Fischer was ordered to pay pursuant to her plea agreement. But after reviewing the evidence presented at trial, the court rejected Groom’s arguments. It determined that the Division suffered a loss of $259,881.12 as the result of Groom’s criminal conduct, and it issued a restitution judgment for that amount. This appeal followed.

Groom's argument that the superior court's restitution order violated his constitutional right to a criminal jury trial under the Sixth Amendment

[1, 2] Under Alaska law, restitution is determined by the trial court.⁴ Alaska Statute 12.55.045 mandates that courts "shall, when presented with credible evidence, … order a defendant convicted of an offense to make restitution." Our case law makes clear that the amount of restitution should reflect the actual damages proximately caused by the conduct for which the defendant was convicted.⁵

On appeal, Groom does not argue that there was insufficient evidence to support the superior court’s award of restitution in the amount of $259,881.12 or that the superior court erred in how it came to this amount. Instead, Groom claims that the restitution judgment was issued in violation of his right to have a jury, rather than the court, determine the amount of restitution.

[3, 4] Groom’s argument is primarily based on decisions of the United States Supreme Court interpreting the Sixth Amendment of the United States Constitution.⁶ The Sixth Amendment provides that, in "all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury." In its landmark decision in Apprendi v. New Jersey, the Supreme Court explained that the right to a jury trial is not limited to adjudicating a defendant’s guilt but extends to a determination of any fact that increases the penalty for a crime beyond the prescribed statutory maximum (other than the fact of a prior conviction).⁷ In other words, the defendant has the right to a jury determination of all the facts that the law makes essential to determining the parameters of the potential punishment.

Four years later, the Supreme Court held in Blakely v. Washington that the relevant "statutory maximum" is not the maximum sentence a judge may impose after finding additional facts, but rather is the maximum sentence the judge may impose solely on the basis of the facts reflected in the jury verdict or admitted by the defendant.⁸ And more recently, the Court held that any fact that increases a mandatory minimum penalty must also be submitted to a jury and proved beyond a reasonable doubt.⁹

Relying on these cases, Groom argues that the facts relied on by a court to determine the appropriate restitution award must be found by a jury beyond a reasonable doubt. He contends that, in this case, the court was not authorized to award any restitution because determining the amount of the Division’s losses required factual findings beyond those necessary to adjudicate his guilt, and that these findings must be made by a jury rather than by the judge.

We previously considered the question of whether the Apprendi line of cases applies to restitution orders in two separate cases — an unpublished memorandum decision, Her v. State,¹⁰ and more recently, a published opinion, Skupa v. State.¹¹ But we did not definitively answer the question in either case.

In Her, we noted that the overwhelming authority had determined that the Apprendi line of cases did not apply to restitution orders.¹² But we acknowledged that some legal commentators and two Supreme Court justices appeared to believe that Apprendi and its progeny require the facts supporting a restitution award to be submitted to a jury.¹³ Ultimately, we concluded that we did not need to decide this question of law because, even if the Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial applies to the restitution determination, the absence of a jury finding was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt under the facts of that case.¹⁴

In Skupa, we also declined to answer this legal question.¹⁵ Skupa was convicted pursuant to a plea agreement.¹⁶ As required by the plea agreement, Skupa entered a guilty plea to the charge of first-degree theft and agreed to pay restitution.¹⁷ After conducting a restitution hearing, the court ordered her to pay $415,554.61 in restitution.¹⁸ For the first time on appeal, Skupa claimed that the superior court was not authorized to award more than $25,000 in restitution because she had only admitted to stealing "$25,000 or more" when she pleaded guilty.¹⁹ Skupa claimed it was plain error for the superior court to have failed to recognize that the restitution order was issued in violation of her Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial.²⁰

But when Skupa entered into her plea agreement, she waived her Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial.²¹ Even assuming Skupa could argue that her guilty plea was not knowing and voluntary because she was unaware that she was waiving a right to a jury determination of restitution — a right that no court had recognized — she was not attempting to withdraw her plea. Instead, Skupa sought to maintain the benefits of her plea agreement while demanding a jury trial on the amount of restitution. Because the law does not permit this approach, we rejected Skupa’s claim of plain error.²²

[5] Like Skupa, Groom did not demand a jury trial on the question of restitution and instead asserts on appeal that the superior court’s failure to conduct a jury trial was plain error. But unlike Skupa, Groom was not convicted as part of a comprehensive plea agreement. This case thus requires us to resolve the question we left unanswered in Skupa and Her: whether a criminal defendant has the right under the Sixth Amendment to have a jury — rather than the court — determine the amount of restitution.

As we noted in Skupa, "Every court to address this legal issue — at least fifteen state courts and eleven federal circuit courts — has held that the Apprendi line of cases does not apply to indeterminate restitution statutes."²³ Courts that have decided this issue have generally followed one of two analytical paths to reach the conclusion that restitution findings may be made by a judge rather than a jury.²⁴ One group of courts has concluded that, for purposes of the Sixth Amendment, criminal restitution is not punishment, while the other group has concluded that Apprendi and its progeny do not...