Gilley v. State

In Gilley v. State, 955 P.2d 927 (Alaska App. 1998), the Court was asked to construe the post-1982 version of the statute -- i.e., the version that included the language about unclassified and class A felonies. The Court interpreted this statute to mean that: (1) if a defendant's most recent discharge from felony supervision occurred within the statutory look-back period, then all of the defendant's prior felony convictions count for presumptive sentencing purposes but (2) if a defendant's most recent discharge from felony supervision occurred outside the statutory look-back period (that is, if the unconditional release from supervision occurred 10 years or more before the defendant's commission of the present offense), then the only prior felony convictions that count for presumptive sentencing purposes are the defendant's convictions for unclassified felonies or class A felonies (if any). Gilley, 955 P.2d at 930. The Court interpreted this statute to mean that if the interval between a defendant's current offense and his unconditional discharge from the immediately preceding felony conviction is less than ten years, then all of the defendant's prior felony convictions are counted toward determining the applicable presumptive sentencing range, regardless of how old those convictions are. Further, the sentencing court has no discretion to ignore these felonies unless they are expressly exempted by statute.