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583 P.2d 886

Docket No. 3764.

State v. Thornton

STATE of Alaska, Petitioner, v. Michael THORNTON, Respondent.

Alaska Supreme Court

Decided September 15, 1978.

Alaska Supreme Court · decided 1978-09-15

Relies on State v. Glass

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1978-09-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 9 later decisions — most recently September 2015

9 state decisions

4019781980199020002010decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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¶1*887 Steven J. Call, Asst. Dist. Atty., Harry L. Davis, Dist. Atty., Fairbanks, Avrum M. Gross, Atty. Gen., Juneau, for petitioner.

¶2Mark E. Ashburn, Asst. Public Defender, Fairbanks, Brian Shortell, Public Defender, Anchorage, for respondent.

¶3Before BOOCHEVER, Chief Justice, RABINOWITZ, CONNOR, BURKE and MATTHEWS, Justices.

¶4

OPINION

¶5BOOCHEVER, Chief Justice.

¶6This matter is before us on the State of Alaska's petition for review.[1] The issue presented is nearly identical to the one decided by this court in State v. Glass,583 P.2d 872 (Alaska 1978).

¶7In the case at bar the superior court entered an order suppressing evidence consisting of tape recordings of conversations between respondent Michael Thornton and Phillip Herian, a police informant. Those conversations related to various sales of cocaine allegedly made by Thornton. All such conversations were recorded by Herian or with Herian's consent, but without the prior knowledge of Thornton. Some of the conversations occurred on the telephone. Others took place in Herian's home. The recordings were made without benefit of a search warrant or other order of the court.

¶8The superior court ruled that any electronic surveillance or recording of a conversation between persons "in their homes, in others' homes, in public places or elsewhere," made without either a search warrant or a showing that it was impossible to obtain a search warrant, and notwithstanding that such surveillance or recording was done by or with the consent of one party to the conversation, violates the constitutional rights of a party to the conversation who was not aware of such surveillance or recording.

¶9For the reasons stated in our opinion in State v. Glass, supra, we hold that the recording of the conversations in this case violated Thornton's rights under art. I, §§ 14 and 22 of the Alaska Constitution.

¶10Accordingly, the superior court's order is AFFIRMED.

¶11BURKE, J., dissents.

¶12BURKE, Justice, dissenting.

¶13For the reasons expressed in my dissenting opinion in State v. Glass,583 P.2d 872 (Alaska 1978), I disagree with the majority's conclusion that the electronic monitoring and recording of the defendant's conversations violated his rights under art. I, §§ 14 and 22 of the Constitution of Alaska. Thus, I would reverse the superior court's suppression order.

NOTES

¶14[1] See Appellate Rules 23 and 24.

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