RONALD F. WYATT, Appellant,
v.
STATE OF ALASKA, Appellee.
Appeal
from the Superior Court, No. 1JU-05-620 CI, First Judicial
District, Juneau, Philip M. Pallenberg, Judge.
Ronald
F. Wyatt, in propria persona, Wasilla, Alaska, for the
Appellant.
Michael Sean McLaughlin, Assistant Attorney General, Office
of Criminal Appeals, Anchorage, and Michael C. Geraghty,
Attorney General, Juneau, for the Appellee.
Before: Mannheimer, Chief Judge, Allard, Judge, and Suddock,
Superior Court Judge. [*]
OPINION
MANNHEIMER Judge.
In
1994, Ronald F. Wyatt was convicted of first-degree murder
and evidence tampering in connection with the homicide of his
wife. This Court affirmed his convictions on direct
appeal.[1]
In
2000, Wyatt filed a pro se application for
post-conviction relief in which he claimed that his trial
attorney had actively impeded his wish to testify on his own
behalf at his trial. However, after an attorney was appointed
to represent Wyatt in this post-conviction relief litigation,
the attorney abandoned Wyatt's claim of active
obstruction and instead pursued a different claim: that
Wyatt's trial judge had failed to obtain Wyatt's
express waiver of his right to testify.
The
superior court dismissed that application for failure to
state a prima facie case for relief, and we upheld the
superior court's decision.[2]
Wyatt
then filed a second application for post-conviction relief,
claiming that his first post-conviction relief attorney had
incompetently abandoned his initial claim for post-conviction
relief and had, instead, substituted a claim that had no
chance of success. In this second application, Wyatt renewed
his claim that his trial attorney had actively obstructed or
usurped his decision to testify on his own behalf at trial.
The
superior court dismissed this second application for
post-conviction relief on the pleadings, again concluding
that Wyatt failed to state a prima facie case for relief.
For the
reasons explained here, we find that the superior court erred
in dismissing Wyatt's second application on the pleadings
- that this second application did, in fact, state a prima
facie claim for relief. We therefore reverse the superior
court's decision and remand Wyatt's case to the
superior court for further proceedings consistent with this
opinion.
Underlying
proceedings
The
facts of Wyatt's underlying criminal case and his first
petition for postconviction relief are more fully described
in this Court's decisions in Wyatt v. State (I),
unpublished, 1997 WL 250441 (Alaska App. 1997) (resolving
Wyatt's direct appeal), and Wyatt v. State (II),
unpublished, 2004 WL 2966177 (Alaska App. 2004) (resolving
Wyatt's first petition for post-conviction relief). The
following procedural history is taken from those two prior
decisions, as well as from the pleadings filed in Wyatt's
current (second) petition for post-conviction relief.
Wyatt
was indicted in 1992 for murdering his wife and for tampering
with evidence by hiding her body. Toward the end of
Wyatt's trial, his attorney announced that he intended to
rest the defense case without putting Wyatt on the stand. The
trial judge accordingly advised Wyatt of his right to testify
as required by LaVigne v. State.[3] In response to
this advisement, Wyatt acknowledged that he understood that
he had the absolute right to testify, and that the decision
was his to make, not his attorney's. At that point, Wyatt
said nothing more, and the judge did not press Wyatt to
formally declare that he did not wish to
testify.[4]
The
prosecutor was not prepared to present his rebuttal case that
day, so he asked the judge to adjourn the trial until the
next day. During this discussion, Wyatt said nothing to
indicate that he wanted to testify before the prosecutor
presented his rebuttal case.[5]
Ultimately,
the jury convicted Wyatt of both murder and evidence
tampering. We affirmed Wyatt's convictions and sentence
in his direct appeal.[6]
Wyatt
then filed a pro se application for post-conviction
relief, raising a number of claims. Among these claims was
the assertion that Wyatt's trial attorney had actively
obstructed or usurped Wyatt's decision to testify on his
own behalf- allegedly by telling Wyatt that he would not
permit him to take the stand.
The
superior court appointed an attorney to represent Wyatt, and
that attorney filed an amended application for
post-conviction relief. In this amended application, the
attorney abandoned Wyatt's claim that his trial attorney
had obstructed him from testifying. Instead, the
post-conviction relief attorney substituted a different
claim: that the trial judge's LaVigne inquiry
had been insufficient as a matter of law.
Wyatt's
post-conviction relief attorney argued that even though the
trial judge adequately advised Wyatt of his right to testify,
the judge then committed error by failing to obtain
Wyatt's express waiver of the right to testify. The
attorney further argued that the judge's omission
required automatic reversal of Wyatt's conviction.
The
superior court dismissed Wyatt's post-conviction relief
application, finding that it failed to state a prima facie
case. We affirmed that decision on appeal, holding that the
trial judge had complied with LaVigne even though
Wyatt had not expressly waived his right to
testify.[7]
Wyatt
then filed a second application for post-conviction relief,
alleging that the attorney who represented him in the first
post-conviction relief litigation was incompetent because he
abandoned Wyatt's original claim for relief- the claim
that Wyatt's trial attorney had actively obstructed him
from testifying.[8] In support of this claim, Wyatt submitted
an affidavit in which he stated:
At the time of my trial, I did not understand that I had the
absolute right to testify. I had asked my attorney to permit
me to testify, and he had indicated that I would not be
permitted to testify, and had taken no steps to prepare me to
testify, even though I had pointed out several areas in which
I could provide information to rebut the prosecution's
evidence.
Wyatt's
affidavit further alleged that when the trial judge advised
him that he could testify despite his attorney's contrary
wishes, Wyatt then waited for the judge to inquire whether he
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