Lageson v. State

Opinion

2026 WL 2185606

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NOTICE: UNPUBLISHED OPINION

NOTICE

This is a summary disposition issued under Alaska Appellate Rule 214(a). Summary dispositions of this Court do not create legal precedent. See Alaska Appellate Rule 214(d).

Court of Appeals of Alaska.

Clinton Ray LAGESON, Appellant,

v.

STATE of Alaska, Appellee.

Court of Appeals No. A-14449

July 29, 2026

Appeal from the Superior Court, Third Judicial District, Kenai, Lance Joanis, Judge. Trial Court No. 3KN-22-00372 CR

Attorneys and Law Firms

Elizabeth D. Friedman, Law Office of Elizabeth D. Friedman, Prineville, Oregon, under contract with the Office of Public Advocacy, Anchorage, for the Appellant. Kayla H. Doyle, Assistant Attorney General, Office of Criminal Appeals, Anchorage, and Cori M. Mills, Acting Attorney General, Juneau, for the Appellee.

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

SUMMARY DISPOSITION

Star page 1*1 Clinton Ray Lageson was convicted, following a jury trial, of one count of first-degree burglary and one count of violating a protective order.¹

On appeal, the parties filed a joint motion for limited summary disposition under Alaska Appellate Rule 214. In the joint motion, the State concedes that Lageson's burglary conviction must be reversed because the State's closing argument allowed the jury to decide the case on an impermissible legal theory. We have reviewed the record, and we conclude that the State's concession is well-founded.²

To establish that Lageson committed first-degree burglary under AS 11.46.300(a)(1), the State was required to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Lageson entered or remained unlawfully in a dwelling with the intent to commit a crime in the dwelling. Under Alaska law, the intended crime element cannot be based on the same conduct that makes the initial entry unlawful.³

But in Lageson's case, the prosecutor told the jury in closing argument that each of these elements could be satisfied by Lageson's violation of the same provision of the protective order, without clarifying that the jury could not find that violation of this provision satisfied both elements simultaneously.⁴ We agree that this argument was error and that it permitted the jury to convict Lageson of burglary under an impermissible legal theory. We also agree with the parties that the error was not harmless and that it requires reversal of Lageson's burglary conviction.

The State has separately agreed not to retry Lageson for the burglary charge and indicated its intent to dismiss this charge with prejudice under Alaska Criminal Rule 43(a). Based on this agreement, the parties further agree that Lageson's remaining issues on appeal are moot and need not be addressed by this Court.

Accordingly, because the State's concession of error is well-founded, we REVERSE Lageson's conviction for first-degree burglary, and we REMAND this case to the superior court for resentencing on the remaining conviction for violating a protective order.

Footnotes

1

AS 11.46.300(a)(1) and AS 11.56.740(a)(1), respectively.

2

See Marks v. State, 496 P.2d 66, 67-68 (Alaska 1972) (holding that an appellate court must independently assess whether the State's concession of error in a criminal case is well-founded).

3

See Pushruk v. State, 780 P.2d 1044, 1048 (Alaska App. 1989) (recognizing that to prove a defendant guilty of burglary, the State “must show the defendant had the intent to commit an additional crime at the time his presence on the premises first became unlawful, i.e., at the time that he first trespassed, entered or remained unlawfully on the premises” (emphasis added)).

4

Cf. Lane v. State, 2019 WL 4673556, at *2-3 (Alaska App. Sep. 25, 2019) (unpublished) (holding that violating a domestic violence protective order can meet the required elements of a burglary conviction so long as the intended crime is violating a different provision of the protective order than the provision that makes the entry into the dwelling unlawful).

End of Document