Court Opinion

ID: 9666813
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 01:27:56.789025+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:59:44.552773
License: Public Domain

HENDERSON, Justice
(specially concurring).
Appellate counsel for Ferguson was also trial counsel. Under SDCL 23A-27-11, counsel was permitted to make a motion to withdraw a plea of guilty before sentence was imposed. Alternatively, counsel could have filed a motion to withdraw a plea of guilty “... to correct manifest injustice ... after sentence ...” Counsel made no such motion. Apparently, the plea bargain was acceptable to Ferguson and to his counsel. Had Ferguson moved to withdraw his guilty plea, the trial court did not have to grant it. It is all within the discretion of the trial court. State v. Grosh, 387 N.W.2d 503 (S.D.1986).
Having accepted the sentence and the dismissal of many counts of sexual abuse of prepubescent boys, Ferguson now comes to the Supreme Court upon an Eighth Amendment argument, namely that he has received unconstitutional punishment. In the appellant’s brief, Ferguson’s counsel now sets forth, for the first time, studies involving sex offenders within South Dakota which were gathered from the South Dakota Statistical Analysis Center within the Division of Criminal Investigation of the Office of the South Dakota Attorney General. Further, for the first time, again at appellate level, Ferguson presents statutes of adjoining states with lesser penalties for similar offenses. Too late. Said information is not part of the settled record. State v. Herman, 253 N.W.2d 454, 457 (S.D.1977). No motion was ever made to the trial court to present any statistics, studies, data, or history of eases, court records or studies which would trigger a shock the conscience or disproportionality review. The tactic of Ferguson and his counsel appears obvious: Take advantage of the plea bargain and later, at the appellate level, try to set aside the sentence as being unconstitutional punishment. The material presented in the brief by way of statistics within the South Dakota Statistical Analysis Center was apparently held as a backup for appellate advocacy. Ferguson cannot have it both ways: First take advantage of the plea bargain and then seek to repudiate it by erupting, for the first time at appellate level, with a host of statutory and sentencing references and statistics.
Compare my dissent in State v. Pack, 516 N.W.2d 665 (S.D.1994), where appellant Pack requested a sentencing hearing to produce Unified Judicial System (UJS) sentencing statistics, but could not do so as the UJS would not furnish same -without receiving $448.00. Pack was indigent. Compare, also, the special concurrence of this writer in Butt v. Leapley, 507 N.W.2d 325, 333 (S.D.1993), where I expressed:
Replete is the record below with exhibits, case history, statistics, and data setting forth twenty defendants who were sentenced to the State Penitentiary in South Dakota for kidnapping. (Emphasis added.)
See also State v. Castaneira, 502 N.W.2d 112, 116 (S.D.1993) (Henderson, J., concurring specially). In this case, the record is not “replete” with exhibits, data, case history, statistics and data. Nay, no showing was made whatsoever. And a proportionality analysis was never presented below. State v. Christians, 381 N.W.2d 214 (S.D.1986).