Nov 16, 2003. The Alaska Court of Appeals has refused to reconsider its earlier ruling which allowed adults to possess small amounts of marijuana in the privacy of their homes for personal use. The state's Attorney General requested a rehearing of the court's August ruling in the case of a North Pole man.
David Noy of North Pole, Alaska appealed his 2001 conviction of possession of marijuana to the appeals court based on the Alaksa Suupreme Court's 1975 ruling in Ravin v State, in which it ruled that the state's constitution establishes a board right to privacy.
The Ravin ruling gave Alaska some of the most liberal marijuana laws in the U.S., but in 1990 voters passed a referendum which criminalized the possession of marijuana again. The Court of Appeals ruling in the Noy case said that the state's constitution established a right to privacy so strong that neither the voters nor the legislature has the right to usurp that right.
"The state contends that this view of Ravin is fundamentally flawed and that Ravin did not announce a constitutional restriction on the government's lawmaking power ... we are convinced that the state's interpretation of Ravin is wrong," the state appeals court said in its ruling in the Noy case.
Attorney General Gregg Renkes plans to appeal the ruling to the state Supreme Court, which made the Ravin ruling in the first place.
