Court Opinion

ID: 9743351
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 21:31:30.745356+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:40.701637
License: Public Domain

SCHUDSON, J.
¶ 14. (dissenting). There's much more to this story.
¶ 15. The prosecutor advised the court that, under a proposed plea agreement, it was offering Richardson either of two options:
[T]he State . .. would either leave sentencing to the Court and not be specific as to length or... the State would recommend a range of time somewhere in the range of 20 to 30 years if Mr. Richardson wanted the State to be more specific. . . . [W]e're more than willing to take either of these two positions. . ..
Defense counsel, after conferring with Richardson, advised the court that Richardson was "willing to enter into a plea, based upon the negotiations being that [the prosecutor] will not recommend any specific sentence at the time of sentencing." The prosecutor then added:
To be specific, the State is willing to leave the length of the incarceration entirely up to the Court, will not make any specific numerical type of recommendation. It will just be incarceration and restitution and leaving all specifics to the Court.
Thus, Richardson refused a plea agreement that would have allowed the State to recommend a range of twenty to thirty years in prison, but accepted an agreement leaving, in the prosecutor's words, "the length of the incarceration entirely up to the Court."
*719¶ 16. At sentencing, however, the prosecutor emphasized, "[T]his particular case is, if not the most serious case I've handled this year,... certainly among the top two or three." He then added, "This is one of the most serious non-fatal crimes that I have dealt with."
¶ 17. Most significantly, as revealed in the post-conviction motion submissions, the prosecutor (who had handled the plea proceedings), in his letter to defense counsel denying that he had breached the plea agreement, maintained that the plea agreement "most certainly did not 'limit the prosecutor's ability to present arguments supporting a lengthy prison term,'" as defense counsel had alleged in his letter to another prosecutor (who was then handling the postconviction proceedings). Additionally, in that same letter to defense counsel, the prosecutor (who handled the plea proceedings) maintained that "[pjainting a vivid picture of just how awful a crime this was and how it related to the 'average robbery' was made even more necessary by the fact that Judge Gordon was relatively new to felony court and . . . had . . . handled relatively few, if any, of these types of cases."
¶ 18. The prosecutor's trial court declaration of the plea agreement cannot be reconciled with his post-conviction characterization of the agreement. The prosecutor initially represented that, under the agreement, the State would "leave the length of the incarceration entirely up to the Court." In his letter, however, the prosecutor claimed that the agreement "most certainly did not 'limit the prosecutor's ability to present arguments supporting a lengthy prison term.' " And, in his letter, the prosecutor candidly acknowledged what he perceived as the need, based on the judge's relative inexperience, to offer information that would help the judge understand that Richardson's *720crime was far more serious than the " 'average robbery.' " Unquestionably, such comments countered the agreement to "leave the length of the incarceration entirely up to the Court."
¶ 19. Unquestionably, such comments urged the judge to order a sentence at or near the maximum end of the statutory range. And actually, on this point, there really is little if any dispute. After all, the prosecutor, quite understandably (given his view that the agreement did not limit his ability to "present arguments supporting a lengthy prison term"), offered extensive comments to guide what he considered an inexperienced judge toward a lengthy period of incarceration
¶ 20. The majority suggests that Richardson opened the door to the prosecutor's remarks. See Majority at ¶ 11. The record, however, in two totally obvious ways, reveals that he did not.
¶ 21. First, the prosecutor's comments preceded those from defense counsel and Richardson. Clearly, therefore, Richardson had not opened any door.
¶ 22. Second, even if we could pretend that the prosecutor's comments came after those of defense counsel or Richardson, the prosecutor's remarks were unrelated to the "defensive ploy" the majority claims as the basis for the prosecutor's response. Without any basis in the record, the majority asserts that "Richardson's defensive ploy was to divert attention to his unknown accomplice, and to deflect responsibility...." Majority at ¶ 11. If that were so, the prosecutor perhaps could have offered information tightly tying Richardson to the crime, thus defeating the "defensive ploy." The prosecutor's remarks, however, do not even attempt to do that; they address the seriousness of the *721crime without regard to the relative culpability of Richardson and his accomplice.1
¶ 23. "A criminal defendant has a constitutional right to the enforcement of a negotiated plea agreement .... '[0]nce the defendant has given up his bargaining chip by pleading guilty, due process requires that the defendant's expectations be fulfilled.' " State v. Smith, 207 Wis. 2d 258, 271, 558 N.W.2d 379 (1997) (citations omitted). "When a prosecutor does not make the negotiated sentencing recommendation, that conduct constitutes a breach of the plea agreement." Id. at 272.
¶ 24. In this case, admittedly, the record allows for several interpretations of the exact parameters of the plea agreement and the prosecutor's comments. With considerable effort, perhaps, one could wrestle the record to the mat and possibly pin this sentencing at the outer edge. But why do so? After all, the inconsistency between the prosecutor's initial and postconviction representations reflect, at the very least, even the prosecutor's differing interpretations of the plea agreement.
¶ 25. The integrity of the plea agreement/sentencing process is essential to justice — for both defendants and the State. Preserving that integrity requires re-sentencing where, as here, the record reveals, at the very least, the substantial likelihood of a breach. Accordingly, I respectfully dissent.

 In fact, the prosecutor's remarks, if anything, do the opposite of what the majority maintains. The prosecutor emphasized, as one of ten aggravating factors, that Richardson, instead of cooperating, had "chosen instead to protect his accomplice and refuse to name his accomplice."