Esmil v. State

• Court: Court of Appeals of Alaska
• Decided: April 22, 2026
• Docket: A-14382
• Status: Unpublished

Opinion

2026 WL 1091117

Only the Westlaw citation is currently available.

NOTICE: UNPUBLISHED OPINION

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, although it may be cited for whatever persuasive value it may have. See McCoy v. State, 80 P.3d 757, 764 (Alaska App. 2002).

Court of Appeals of Alaska.

Abraham Michael ESMIL, Appellant,

v.

STATE of Alaska, Appellee.

Court of Appeals No. A-14382

April 22, 2026

Appeal from the Superior Court, Fourth Judicial District, Fairbanks, Matthew Christian, Judge. Trial Court No. 4FA-19-02457 CI

Attorneys and Law Firms

Jay A. Hochberg, Attorney at Law, Kapolei, Hawaii, under contract with the Public Defender Agency, and Terrence Haas, Public Defender, Anchorage, for the Appellant.

Madeline M. Magnuson, Assistant Attorney General, Office of Criminal Appeals, Anchorage, and Stephen J. Cox, Acting Attorney General, Juneau, for the Appellee.

Before: Allard, Chief Judge, and Terrell and Beach, Judges.

MEMORANDUM OPINION

Judge BEACH.

*1 Abraham Michael Esmil pleaded guilty, pursuant to a plea agreement, to felony driving under the influence and fourth-degree weapons misconduct in exchange for admittance into the Fairbanks Wellness Court.¹ Under the Wellness Court agreement terms, if Esmil missed any random or regularly scheduled alcohol test or tested positive for alcohol, he would be given a “strike.” Accruement of four strikes would result in termination from Wellness Court. The agreement also explained that there were progressive sanctions for violating the terms, culminating in discretionary discharge from the Wellness Court program. While the agreement contained a savings clause that authorized the Wellness Court team “to review each situation requiring termination from the Program on a case-by-case basis,” an individual could only be conditionally reinstated upon the unanimous agreement of the team.

The plea agreement specified that, by entering a guilty plea, Esmil voluntarily waived his right to appeal both his conviction and “the terms of the agreement to enter the Wellness Court Program.” The agreement further provided that neither sanctions nor the Wellness Court's decisions regarding treatment progress or continued program participation were subject to appeal.

Esmil received four strikes between August 2017 and September 2018. In November 2018, Esmil missed a support group meeting — a violation of his Wellness Court agreement — though this did not result in a strike. On December 31, 2018, Esmil failed to appear for a urinalysis test and a meeting with his probation officer; Esmil left a voicemail for his probation officer stating that he had been drinking. On January 2, 2019, Esmil missed another group meeting. The following day, Esmil missed a Wellness Court hearing, and the court responded by issuing a no-bail bench warrant. On January 4, upon learning of the warrant, Esmil turned himself over to police custody; he was arraigned the following day and informed that he would be held without bail until his next court date.

On January 10, 2019, having committed ten violations of his Wellness Court agreement, including five strikes, Esmil was discharged from the program. After being informed of his discharge, Esmil addressed the Wellness Court, explaining that there had been a death in his family, that he had lost his phone, and that he had checked himself into detox during the holidays so as to not be alone. The Wellness Court judge responded,

Mr. Esmil, I appreciate your words. Bottom line, the team doesn't think we have anything more to offer you. This is your second time through. This was, I believe, your fifth strike — fourth or fifth strike. We have tried everything in our toolbox, and it simply hasn't worked.

The day after the hearing, Esmil's attorney requested that the Wellness Court review Esmil's termination from the program. The request was denied. At the Wellness Court team's next meeting, Esmil's attorney again asked the team to reconsider the issue of Esmil's termination. This request was also denied. The following week, Esmil was sentenced in accordance with his plea agreement.

*2 Esmil then filed an application for post-conviction relief, claiming that his attorney provided ineffective assistance of counsel by (1) failing to ensure that his due process rights were exercised in his discharge from Wellness Court and (2) failing to appeal his termination from the program. After an evidentiary hearing, the superior court denied Esmil's application for post-conviction relief, ruling that he was not prejudiced by counsel's failure to ensure due process in his discharge from Wellness Court and that counsel was not incompetent for failing to appeal his dismissal.

Esmil now appeals those rulings.

Why we affirm the superior court's denial of Esmil's application for post-conviction relief

We review the denial of an application for post-conviction relief premised on ineffective assistance of counsel as a mixed question of fact and law.² Findings of fact are upheld unless clearly erroneous.³ We review conclusions of law, including whether a set of factual determinations qualifies as ineffective assistance, de novo.⁴

A claim of ineffective assistance requires a defendant to establish both (1) incompetent performance by the defendant's attorney and (2) actual prejudice.⁵ A lawyer's performance is incompetent if it falls below the objective standard of minimal competence, i.e., “a level of performance no reasonably competent lawyer would provide.”⁶ To show ineffective assistance of counsel, a defendant must show “not that his trial counsel could have done things better, but that no competent attorney would have done things as badly as his trial counsel did.”⁷ To satisfy the prejudice prong, a defendant must demonstrate that “counsel's incompetence had some actual, adverse impact on the case” and that it contributed to the disposition or sentence.⁸

As to Esmil's first claim — that counsel was ineffective for failing to protect his due process rights during his discharge from Wellness Court — the superior court found that, although counsel was incompetent pursuant to this Court's holding in Mollica v. State, Esmil was not actually prejudiced by this incompetence.⁹ On appeal, Esmil argues that he was prejudiced by his attorney's incompetence because it caused him to lose the opportunity to present mitigating evidence that might have prevented his discharge. The State argues that the superior court erred in applying Mollica retroactively to Esmil's ineffective assistance claim, that Esmil's attorney was not actually incompetent because she did challenge Esmil's discharge from Wellness Court, and that Esmil was not prejudiced because his discharge was mandatory and he was able to present his mitigating evidence to the Wellness Court.

As an initial matter, because we find that Esmil was not actually prejudiced, we need not reach the issue of whether the superior court erred in applying Mollica retroactively to Esmil's ineffective assistance of counsel claim or the issue of whether his attorney was actually incompetent.

Mitigating circumstances can only impact a decision involving discretion.¹⁰ Although the order terminating Esmil from Wellness Court indicated that his discharge was discretionary, Esmil was also subject to mandatory discharge at the time, as he had amassed four strikes (and the most recent violation was his fifth). Additionally, Esmil presented to the Wellness Court the mitigating circumstances he claims he would have presented at an evidentiary hearing,¹¹ and the superior court stated that, even if the Wellness Court had heard the mitigating circumstances prior to discharge, it would have reached the same termination decision.¹² Esmil did not present any new mitigating circumstances in the litigation of his post-conviction relief application, and, in fact, he confirmed that he was disputing the process used to discharge him, not the violations themselves. For these reasons, we find that any error was harmless.

*3 Addressing Esmil's second claim, that his attorney provided ineffective assistance for failing to appeal his termination from Wellness Court, the superior court found that Esmil's attorney was not incompetent for failing to appeal the discharge. On appeal, Esmil argues this was error. We disagree.

As part of the Wellness Court agreement, Esmil expressly waived his right to appeal the Wellness Court's decisions about his progress in treatment and his continued participation in the program. Notably, Esmil's own expert witness on therapeutic courts testified that she had never appealed a final therapeutic court decision of termination. Under these circumstances, we cannot say that Esmil's counsel was incompetent for failing to appeal his termination from the Wellness Court program. Moreover, Esmil was not prejudiced by the failure to appeal because, as previously explained, the outcome would not have been different even if he had received more process.

Conclusion

For these reasons, we AFFIRM the superior court's order denying Esmil's application for post-conviction relief.

Footnotes

1

AS 28.35.030(n) and AS 11.61.210(a)(1), respectively. This was Esmil's second time being admitted into Wellness Court. He had graduated from the Wellness Court program one month prior to his arrest in this case.

2

State v. Simpson, 946 P.2d 890, 892 (Alaska App. 1997).

3

Tucker v. State, 892 P.2d 832, 834 (Alaska App. 1995).

4

See Jackson v. State, 750 P.2d 821, 825 (Alaska App. 1988).

5

State v. Jones, 759 P.2d 558, 567-68 (Alaska App. 1988).

6

Id. at 568.

7

Tucker, 892 P.2d at 835.

8

Jones, 759 P.2d at 572.

9

Mollica v. State, 500 P.3d 1002, 1014-15 (Alaska App. 2021).

10

See Saclamana v. State, 556 P.3d 1205, 1218 (Alaska App. 2024).

11

Esmil explained to the Wellness Court that one of his family members had died, that he had checked himself into “detox during the holidays because [he] didn't want to be by [himself],” that he had lost his phone and had been “living in the woods,” and that he had contacted his parole officer as soon as he could. Additionally, Esmil's attorney twice asked the Wellness Court to reconsider Esmil's termination from the program.

12

We note that the same judge presided over Esmil's Wellness Court hearings and reviewed his application for post-conviction relief.

End of Document