Court Opinion

ID: 9660256
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 22:08:51.566328+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:14:17.076725
License: Public Domain

GILDEA, Justice
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent. The majority concludes that the “interests of justice” exception to the Knaffla procedural bar applies to permit Spears to challenge his sentence more than six years after his conviction became final. We have said, however, that “finality and efficiency” are the reasons for the Knaffla rule. Torres v. State, 688 N.W.2d 569, 572 (Minn.2004). We have also recognized that the exceptions to the Knaffla procedural bar are “quite narrow,” Deegan v. State, 711 N.W.2d 89, 94 (Minn.2006), and we have said that we ought not to apply those exceptions so as to permit the exceptions to “swallow the rule.” Townsend v. State, 723 N.W.2d 14, 19, (Minn.2006).
The “interests of justice” do not support allowing Spears to avoid Knaffla in my view. Spears had the opportunity to press his Apprendi-based challenge during his direct appeal. His conviction became final on September 27, 2000. Apprendi was decided on June 26, 2000. It is true that this court denied review of Spears’s appeal on June 27, 2000. But Spears could have raised the Apprendi issue in a petition for certiorari review in the United States Supreme Court.3 He did not. On this basis *703and because the exceptions to the Knaffla bar should be narrowly construed, I would conclude that the “interests of justice” exception does not apply. See Deegan, 711 N.W.2d at 94 (recognizing that the interests of justice exception does not apply where petitioner “deliberately and inexcusably fail[ed] to raise the issue on direct appeal.” (quotation omitted)).

. In late 2000 and early 2001, the Supreme Court remanded cases to lower courts for “further consideration” where Apprendi issues were apparently present. See, e.g., Jackson v. U.S., 531 U.S. 953, 121 S.Ct. 376, 148 L.Ed.2d 290 (2000) (remanding to United *703States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit for “further consideration in light of Apprendi v. New Jersey ”); McCloud v. Florida, 531 U.S. 1063, 121 S.Ct. 751, 148 L.Ed.2d 654 (2001) (remanding to the District Court of Appeal of Florida, Fifth District). It therefore seems likely that had Spears raised Apprendi in a petition for writ of certiorari, his case would have come back to this court on remand.