Opinion ID: 1849967
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Stay of Adjudication

Text: Streiff relies on two cases involving stays of adjudication to support her view that the district court had the authority to accept her plea to the lesser charges, State v. Krotzer, 548 N.W.2d 252 (Minn.1996) and State v. Olson, 325 N.W.2d 13 (Minn. 1982). Preliminarily, we note that because the act of the court in accepting a plea over the objection of the prosecutor is more intrusive of the prosecutor's charging function than ordering a stay of adjudication, the restriction on the court's authority to accept a plea to a lesser charge would logically be greater than that on the court's authority to order a stay of adjudication. In Krotzer, this court held that the district court had the inherent power to stay adjudication where special circumstances so indicate. 548 N.W.2d at 255. Krotzer was a 19-year-old boy who was charged with statutory rape for having consensual sex with his 14-year-old girlfriend. Id. at 253. Krotzer entered a guilty plea to the prosecutor's charge but requested the court to stay adjudication of his crime. The Department of Corrections, remarking on the lack of aggression in Krotzer's history and the inappropriateness of requiring him to register as a sex offender, recommended that he be placed on probation under a stay of adjudication. The victim's mother agreed. The district court postponed acceptance of the guilty plea and, over the objection of the prosecutor, stayed adjudication and placed Krotzer on probation for 60 months. This court held that the district court had inherent power to stay the adjudication in the furtherance of justice. Id. at 254-55. In Olson, after the defendant had pleaded guilty to assaulting his wife with a dangerous weapon, the district court stayed the 54-month prison sentence for 10 years. 325 N.W.2d at 16. The district court described strong mitigating factors, including the wife's belief that the defendant was a good man and no danger to her, the wife was not seriously hurt (although struck on the arm by a bullet), and the probable loss of the family home and the inability of the children to continue to attend educational programs beyond high school if the defendant was incarcerated. Id. This court held that the district court had the authority to stay the prison term over the prosecutor's objection. Id. But Krotzer and Olson are not particularly helpful to Streiff because in each case, the district court's action took place during the sentencing stage and did not involve a direct intrusion on the charging or plea-bargaining functions of the prosecution. In fact, Krotzer recognized that the court's authority to interfere with the charging function of a prosecutor is much less than its authority in sentencing, stating: Under established separation of power rules, absent evidence of selective or discriminatory prosecutorial intent, or an abuse of prosecutorial discretion, the judiciary is powerless to interfere with the prosecutor's charging authority. 548 N.W.2d at 254 (citations omitted). Moreover, Streiff fails to recognize that this court restricted the holding in Krotzer when it later confirmed that the district court may stay adjudication only where special circumstances are present. State v. Foss, 556 N.W.2d 540 (Minn.1996). This court emphasized in Foss that a stay of adjudication should only be used  sparingly  and only for the purpose of avoiding an injustice resulting from the prosecutor's clear abuse of discretion in the exercise of the charging function. Id. at 541 (emphasis in original). Thus, Foss is even less favorable for Streiff because it recognizes that separation of powers affects not only the authority of the court to directly interfere with the charging function, but also limits the court's authority to indirectly interfere through sentencing. Even more damaging to Streiff's argument is the decision of this court that followed Foss. In State v. Twiss, 570 N.W.2d 487 (Minn.1997), this court reversed the district court's stay of adjudication of the defendant's guilty plea, which had been granted over the objection of the prosecutor based on the possibility that the defendant might lose her job if convicted of a gross misdemeanor. We said that the possible loss of a job is not a special circumstance under Foss. Rather, it is the sort of consequence that commonly attends a conviction of a serious offense, such as the offense in this case. Id. [4] Thus, Streiff's reliance on the stay of adjudication analogy does not support her argument. If the factors relied upon to grant Streiff's Rule 15.07 motion are not special circumstances that would support a court's indirect interference with the charging function through a stay of adjudication, they provide even less support for the court's more direct interference by accepting a plea to a lesser charge.