In an opinion issued Friday, the Alaska Court of Appeals said a convicted Juneau murderer won’t get a review of his 101-year prison sentence as post-conviction relief.
Jason Coday, now 38 years old, was convicted of killing Simone Kim in August 2006. Kim, a 26-year-old painter from Anchorage, was working on a Fred Meyer expansion project in Juneau when Coday shot him at point-blank range behind the store. Coday was ordered to serve a combined sentence of 101 years in prison for the murder and for sawing off the barrel of the rifle used in the shooting.
The opinion issued Friday by the three-judge Alaska Court of Appeals was not a judgment on whether the sentence was appropriate. Rather, it was about whether Coday sufficiently proved that his trial attorney was incompetent or ineffective, which would allow for review of his sentence as a form of post-conviction relief. The appeals court determined Coday didn’t make his case and a lower court’s dismissal of his relief application was appropriate.
Coday’s attorney at trial was public defender David Seid.
In Coday’s appeal, he argued that Seid did not raise a defense of mental disease or defect at trial, and he did not obtain a psychiatric examination before his sentencing.
However, before trial, Seid did have a neuropsychologist evaluate Coday for a possible mental disease or defect. He determined that Coday may have been suffering from a methamphetamine-induced psychosis and possible damage to the frontal lobe of his brain caused by methamphetamine abuse. But the neuropsychologist determined that mental defect and disease weren’t viable defenses.
Coday also alleged in his post-conviction relief application that Seid did not raise concerns about whether he was competent to stand trial, and that Seid failed in his duty to request a psychiatric examination before his sentencing.
Seid acknowledged that Coday had mental health issues and behaved oddly, but that he was competent, the court noted.
Following his trial, Coday also failed to waive his Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination so he could participate in such a psychiatric examination. The courts consider these examinations helpful, but not “indispensable or necessary” before a defendant is sentenced.
