Opinion ID: 2145405
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Court's Ability to Depart from Presumptive Sentence.

Text: Perkins next contends that his guilty plea was not voluntary and intelligent because he did not understand that the court could depart upward from the recommended sentence to the statutory maximum. The requirement that the plea be entered intelligently is designed to insure that the defendant understands the charges, the rights being waived and the consequences of the guilty plea. Brown v. State, 449 N.W.2d 180, 182 (Minn.1989) (citing Trott, 338 N.W.2d at 251). One of the grounds upon which withdrawal of a guilty plea is permissible is if the defendant did not understand the consequences of the plea at the time of pleading, but we have held that withdrawal of a guilty plea is not permissible if, at the time of pleading, the defendant understood the nature and seriousness of the offense charged. Chapman v. State, 282 Minn. 13, 19 n. 8, 162 N.W.2d 698, 702 n. 8 (1968). A sentencing judge has the primary responsibility for eliciting from defendant the testimony needed to establish a factual basis for the guilty plea. State v. Nace, 308 Minn. 170, 171, 241 N.W.2d 101, 102 (1976). But if the record supports the conclusion that the defendant made a voluntary and intelligent plea, the defendant will not be allowed to withdraw the plea even though the sentencing judge did not ask the questions forming the factual basis, and even though the questions asked were leading questions. Id. Perkins claims that he never saw a copy of the criminal complaint and does not recall being informed at arraignment that the statutory maximum for criminal sexual conduct in the first degree was 30 years imprisonment. Perkins testified that his attorney did not tell him, nor did he notice, that the maximum sentence for the offense to which he pleaded guilty was 30 years. Perkins claims that the judge should have informed him during the plea hearing that he was facing a maximum 30-year sentence, and should have told him that serious aggravating factors were present that would justify the statutory maximum. Instead, the judge simply told him that he was free to determine what the sentence would actually be. Under these circumstances, Perkins argues that he reasonably assumed that the judge could give him anything up to the presumptive sentence. If I thought they're even going to come close to anything, doing anything any different, I would have plead[ed] not guilty, took it to jury trial, he insisted. Perkins testified that he was not informed that the judge was considering an upward departure until just before it happened. If I had known that, I would have stopped everything right then, he asserted. Despite Perkins' protestations, there is sufficient evidence to support a finding that at the time he entered his guilty plea, Perkins understood the nature and seriousness of the offense and the maximum sentence that could be imposed. The plea petition that Perkins signed states: I have been told by my attorney and I understand    [t]hat the maximum penalty that the court could impose for this crime    is imprisonment for [blank] [30 is handwritten in the blank] years. Perkins' attorney stated, I know I went over the maximum punishment each offense had with Perkins. Perkins' attorney also stated that he had recognized factors in Perkins' case that supported an upward departure, that he had structured the language in the plea agreement specifically to prevent the state from arguing for an upward departure, and that he had expressed these concerns to Perkins. It is true that when Perkins entered his guilty plea, the judge did not directly ask him whether he knew that the court could depart upward to the statutory maximum. But Perkins did not, and could not, dispute that the plea hearing transcript reflected that his attorney informed him of the statutory maximum when he entered his plea. And, as the postconviction court concluded, Perkins had ample opportunity to voice any concerns as to the plea procedure or the departure at the plea hearing and at the sentencing hearing. The record supports the postconviction court's conclusion that Perkins was informed and knew the maximum punishment and that the judge could depart upward from the recommended sentence to the statutory maximum.