Court Opinion

ID: 9687826
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 16:50:49.60229+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:18:32.144297
License: Public Domain

*221KLAPHAKE, Judge
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent. The majority has focused on the timeliness of appellant’s request to withdraw his plea, stating that timeliness is a threshold issue to be determined before manifest injustice can be considered under Minn. R.Crim. P. 15.05. Timeliness, while an issue under the rule, is not the only factor that must be considered. Butala v. State, 664 N.W.2d 333, 338 (Minn.2003) (“Certainly, delay is one relevant factor against [permitting withdrawal of a plea], and in extreme cases may justify denial of relief.... But we have a commitment to convicted defendants’ rights to at least one substantive review.”).
Even more important is insuring that a plea is accurate, voluntary, and intelligent. State v. Christopherson, 644 N.W.2d 507, 510 (Minn.App.2002), review denied (Minn. July 16, 2002). The Minnesota Supreme court explained these requirements for entering a plea.
The accuracy requirement protects the defendant from pleading guilty to a more serious offense than he or she could be properly convicted of at trial. The voluntariness requirement insures that the guilty plea is not in response to improper pressures or inducements; and the intelligent requirement insures that the defendant understands the charges, his or her rights under the law, and the consequences of pleading guilty.
Alanis v. State, 583 N.W.2d 573, 577 (Minn.1998) (footnotes omitted).
The voluntary aspect of a plea means that if a plea agreement is based on promises or representations by the state, those promises or agreements must be fulfilled. State v. Brown, 606 N.W.2d 670, 674 (Minn.2000). The intelligent requirement means that the defendant must understand the charges, the rights waived, and the consequences of the plea. Id. at 675. These plea requirements are more than mere housekeeping rules; failure to accurately inform a defendant of the consequences of a plea is a denial of due process rights. State v. Wukawitz, 662 N.W.2d 517, 521-22 (Minn.2003) (citing Mabry v. Johnson, 467 U.S. 504, 507-08, 104 S.Ct. 2543, 2546, 81 L.Ed.2d 437 (1984)).
Here, the conditional release requirement was not a part of the plea or sentence; the district court imposed the requirement only upon execution of appellant’s sentence, an event occurring more than two years after the plea and 16 months after the sentencing hearing. It is perplexing that appellant is held to a stringent timeliness standard, but the district court is not. At the time of the sentencing hearing, the conditional release requirement had been a part of the law for several years, yet the district court failed to impose it as mandated by statute until more than a year after sentencing.
Although timeliness is inarguably part of the formula of plea withdrawal under rule 15.05, the larger question, as the supreme court makes clear in Wukawitz, is whether a defendant’s due process rights are violated by the later addition of a conditional release term that exceeds the agreed-upon sentencing cap. See Wukawitz, 662 N.W.2d at 521.
The majority concludes that because appellant waited three years after imposition of the conditional release term, his motion is untimely despite the serious due process implications of the late amendment of his sentence. But here the record is devoid of any explanation of conditional release. In the revocation hearing, which includes a long and thorough discussion of the probation terms appellant failed to complete, the only mention of conditional release is the district court’s comment, “I believe I’m *222also required to advise you that even upon completion of the prison time you’ll be placed on conditional release for an additional period of 10 years once you’re released from prison.” Even the warrant of commitment refers to a conditional release of five, not ten, years. The timing of this appeal suggests that appellant did not understand conditional release until its terms were invoked.
Although the majority finds a bedrock principle of timeliness in rule 15.05, in fact that rule does little to clarify this concept, noting only that a defendant must make a timely motion, which is not barred solely because it occurs after sentencing. Minn. R.Crim. P. 15.05, subd. 1. The rule does not define timeliness. The rule does not specify if timeliness is tied to the lapse of time following the crime, the plea, the sentence, or the imposition of new terms of a sentence, or the defendant’s realization of the consequences of the plea. The majority cites Chapman v. State, 282 Minn. 13, 17, 162 N.W.2d 698, 701 (1968) for the proposition that a timely motion is one “made with due diligence, considering the nature of the allegations therein[.]” It is interesting to note that in Chapman, the defendant was permitted to withdraw his plea three years after it was entered, based on questions raised during the pre-sentence investigation completed prior to sentencing. Id. at 14-15, 162 N.W.2d at 700. In affirming the grant of the defendant’s postconvietion petition, the Chapman court does not discuss the timeliness of the motion but focuses on manifest injustice.
Timeliness, in fact, is a flexible concept. The supreme court recognizes this in Wuk-awitz, by analyzing plea withdrawal in terms of the prejudice, stating, “In the past, we have recognized that reprosecution is always difficult after the passage of a long period of time, and that plea withdrawal should not be used as a tactical device to frustrate the prosecution.” Wukawitz, 662 N.W.2d at 526-27 (quotation omitted). The record here is devoid of any allegation of prejudice to the state should appellant be permitted to withdraw his plea.
In the absence of affirmative allegations that the state would be prejudiced by the withdrawal of this plea, and given the serious due process implications of the late addition to appellant’s sentence, I believe that the proper course here would be to remand this matter to the district court to determine whether appellant should be permitted to withdraw his plea or to have his sentence conform to the plea agreement as in Wukawitz.