Alaska Court of Appeals rules 2013 sex-offense sentencing law can't be applied to earlier crimes

A 2013 law that took away two ways for sex offenders to seek a sentence below the standard range cannot be applied to crimes committed before it took effect, the Alaska Court of Appeals ruled Friday. The court held that applying the law to those crimes violates the Alaska Constitution's ex post facto clause, which bars lawmakers from increasing the punishment for a crime after it was committed. Yako William Collins, whose case it decided, may again ask for his case to go to a special three-judge sentencing panel that can impose a lower sentence.

Collins was found guilty in 2009 of a first-degree sexual assault committed the year before. As a first felony offender, he faced a presumptive range, the standard range set by law, of 20 to 30 years and received 25 years with five suspended.

In 2012, a divided Court of Appeals said defendants facing the higher sex-offense ranges set in 2006 could seek a panel referral by showing either no history of uncharged sexual offenses or rehabilitation prospects that would count as "normal" or "good" in other offenders. Joel Bolger, then a Court of Appeals judge, dissented. The Legislature responded with a law, effective July 1, 2013, that endorsed Bolger's dissent and barred referrals on either ground.

In 2021, the Court of Appeals, adopting the state's position, called that law a clarification of existing law and applied it to Collins, while still letting him seek a referral based on the totality of the circumstances (the case as a whole) if the presumptive range was manifestly unjust, meaning clearly unfair. The Alaska Supreme Court reversed in 2025, holding that lawmakers cannot "clarify" a statute after an appeals court has issued a binding interpretation. It sent the case back to decide whether the change was substantive, altering punishment, or merely procedural.

Senior Judge David Mannheimer wrote Friday's opinion, joined by Judge Bethany Harbison and Bolger, now a senior Supreme Court justice, whose 2012 dissent the 2013 law endorsed. The opinion does not describe the state's argument on remand. It calls the 2013 changes substantive, adding that the result would be the same even if they were procedural, because the amendments "create a substantial risk" that people convicted of sexual felonies will receive longer sentences than under the earlier law.

The ruling does not guarantee a shorter sentence. Collins must still convince the sentencing judge, and then the panel, that refusing any adjustment would be manifestly unjust.

Collins may now renew his request in superior court on all three grounds.