In an opinion published Friday, the Alaska Court of Appeals upheld a decision denying parole for a North Pole man convicted of murdering his wife nearly 40 years ago.
The court’s opinion also supplies an interpretation of state law to clarify some of the powers of the Alaska Parole Board.
The appeals court’s ruling stems from a 1987 incident. That’s when then-33-year-old James Stoneking broke into his estranged wife’s house through a window, before shooting and killing her and critically injuring the man she was with.
The two children of Stoneking and his wife were also home at the time but were not physically harmed. Stoneking was later convicted of first-degree murder, assault and burglary and sentenced to 99 years to serve.
In 2019, he applied for discretionary parole.
The Alaska Parole Board denied the application for numerous reasons, including that releasing him would be a threat to the public and “would diminish the seriousness of the crime.”
The board also said that Stoneking must wait another 10 years before applying for parole again.
To challenge that decision, he filed for post-conviction relief in 2021 in Fairbanks Superior Court, where the judge sided with the parole board. Stoneking’s appeal to the Alaska Court of Appeals then followed.
He argued the board had garbled its use of the state law that outlines when to release or not release a prisoner on parole. Stoneking’s appeal also accused the board of independently deciding the amount of time served that’s adequate for his murder conviction.
He referred to a board member’s statements at his parole hearing, who said that “the hardest thing that we have to decide is how much time is enough time when a life has been taken,” according to court documents.
The opinion published Friday says those arguments required the appeals court judges to interpret Alaska law and describe the state board’s responsibilities when determining if parole would diminish the seriousness of a crime.
The appeals judges wrote that, when evaluating that criterion, the parole board may consider circumstances that show the original offense to be especially egregious.
But the judges added a clarification, saying that being convicted of a serious felony offense is not by itself sufficient proof that allowing a defendant parole would diminish the crime’s seriousness. In other words, the court says the board can’t deny eligible prisoners parole only because they think a minimum punishment isn’t long enough.
“[I]f the Parole Board were to categorically deny applications for discretionary parole made by eligible defendants convicted of serious felony offenses, the Parole Board would, essentially, be substituting its own view – that a longer minimum punishment for a category of crimes is warranted – for the punishment codified by the legislature,” the opinion reads. “This would be unlawful.”
The appeals court opinion states that the board did make some improper remarks about the term of Stoneking’s imprisonment when considering his parole application.
But the judges say the board members also cited specifics to show the extreme nature of the case, including that Stoneking killed his wife while the children were in the home. The majority opinion affirms the superior court’s decision, upholding the parole denial and 10-year moratorium.
In partial dissent, Chief Judge Marjorie Allard wrote that she agrees with denying Stoneking parole, but she said the parole board did not do an adequate job justifying why he could not reapply for another 10 years.