Court Opinion

ID: 9370727
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-02-14 17:12:47.16588+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:16:23.277426
License: Public Domain

FILED
                                                                               February 14, 2023
                             STATE OF WEST VIRGINIA                             EDYTHE NASH GAISER, CLERK
                                                                                SUPREME COURT OF APPEALS
                           SUPREME COURT OF APPEALS                                  OF WEST VIRGINIA

State of West Virginia,
Plaintiff Below, Respondent

vs.) No. 21-0601 (Berkeley County CC-02-2016-F-46)

Christina M. Cuddy,
Defendant Below, Petitioner

                              MEMORANDUM DECISION

       Petitioner Christina M. Cuddy 1 appeals the Circuit Court of Berkeley County’s June 29,
2021, order denying her motion for reduction of sentence under Rule 35(b) of the West Virginia
Rules of Criminal Procedure. Upon our review, we determine that oral argument is unnecessary
and that a memorandum decision affirming the circuit court’s order is appropriate. See W. Va. R.
App. P. 21.

         In 2016, petitioner was convicted of one count of gross child neglect creating a substantial
risk of serious bodily injury, after which she discharged her sentence in May of 2019. At that point,
petitioner began serving a three-year period of post-incarceration supervision.

        In November of 2019, the State filed a petition to revoke petitioner’s supervised release
upon allegations that petitioner failed to report in order to begin her supervised release, had new
interactions with law enforcement in Maryland, and incurred additional criminal charges. After
her extradition from Maryland, petitioner waived her preliminary hearing in December of 2020.
On January 8, 2021, petitioner admitted to the violations in the petition, and the court revoked her
supervised release. The court, however, deferred sentencing pending suitability reports regarding
probation and home incarceration. On February 23, 2021, the court held a dispositional hearing at
which it sentenced petitioner to three years of incarceration for her violations and imposed an
additional three years of supervised release following her incarceration. The order imposing this
sentence was entered on February 25, 2021.

       On June 25, 2021, petitioner filed a motion for reduction of sentence under Rule 35(b) of

       1
        Petitioner appears by counsel Dylan K. Batten. The State of West Virginia appears by
counsel Attorney General Patrick Morrisey and Assistant Attorney General Karen C. Villanueva-
Matkovich.

                                                 1
the Rules of Criminal Procedure in which she asserted that the Maryland charges against her had
been dismissed. Petitioner asserted that the dismissal constituted a material change in
circumstances such that she should not remain incarcerated. The circuit court thereafter denied this
motion as untimely, finding that petitioner filed the motion 122 days after her dispositional hearing
on February 23, 2021. As a result, the court did not rule on the merits of petitioner’s motion. It is
from the order denying her Rule 35(b) motion that petitioner appeals.

       We have previously established the following:

                “In reviewing the findings of fact and conclusions of law of a circuit court
       concerning an order on a motion made under Rule 35 of the West Virginia Rules
       of Criminal Procedure, we apply a three-pronged standard of review. We review
       the decision on the Rule 35 motion under an abuse of discretion standard; the
       underlying facts are reviewed under a clearly erroneous standard; and questions of
       law and interpretations of statutes and rules are subject to a de novo review.” Syl.
       Pt. 1, State v. Head, 198 W.Va. 298, 480 S.E.2d 507 (1996).

Syl. Pt. 1, State v. Marcum, 238 W. Va. 26, 792 S.E.2d 37 (2016). Further, we recently established
that

               [a] sentence is “imposed” for purposes of Rule 35(b) of the West Virginia
       Rules of Criminal Procedure when the sentence is verbally pronounced at the
       sentencing hearing. Accordingly, a motion to reduce a sentence under Rule 35(b)
       is timely when it is filed within 120 days after the sentence is pronounced at a
       sentencing hearing.

Syl. Pt. 4, State v. Keefer, -- W. Va. --, -- S.E.2d --, 2022 WL 16706957 (2022). Because it is
undisputed that petitioner filed her motion outside the applicable timeframe, we find no error in
the circuit court’s denial of the same as untimely.

        For the foregoing reasons, we affirm the circuit court’s June 29, 2021, order denying
petitioner’s Rule 35(b) motion for reduction of sentence.

                                                                                          Affirmed.

ISSUED: February 14, 2023

CONCURRED IN BY:

Chief Justice Elizabeth D. Walker
Justice Tim Armstead
Justice John A. Hutchison
Justice C. Haley Bunn

                                                 2
DISSENTING:

Justice William R. Wooton

Wooton, Justice, dissenting:

        I respectfully dissent, as I believe that State v. Keefer, __ W. Va. __, 880 S.E.2d 106 (2022),
the precedent upon which the majority relies, was wrongly decided insofar as it announced a new
rule of law – one which disadvantaged a criminal defendant by reducing the time within which a
motion can be filed pursuant to Rule 35(b) of the West Virginia Rules of Criminal Procedure –
and applied it retroactively to the defendant/petitioner in that case. 2 As I noted in my concurring
and dissenting opinion,

                it was both unnecessary and imprudent to issue a new point of law
                to dispose of this matter without the benefit of oral argument.
                Because Rule 35 is a court rule, clarifications or changes of the rules
                which threaten to have widespread effect are best undertaken
                through rule amendment after an appropriate period of public
                comment. At a minimum, the majority’s new point of law should
                have expressly been made to operate prospectively only, lest
                countless defendants be unfairly disadvantaged.

Keefer, __ W. Va. at __, 880 S.E.2d at 113 (Wooton, J., concurring, in part, and dissenting, in part)
(emphasis added).

        Our precedents counsel that a new principle of law cannot be applied retroactively if such
application “would retard its operation . . . [and] would produce inequitable results.” Syl. Pt. 5, in
part, State v. Blake, 197 W. Va. 700, 478 S.E.2d 550 (1996). In the instant case, it cannot be
gainsaid that retroactive application of Keefer, a decision which was issued some five months after
the circuit court denied relief in the instant case, is inequitable. At the time petitioner filed his Rule
35(b) motion, when the pendency of the Keefer opinion was not on anyone’s radar as it had never
been set for oral argument, petitioner had every reason to believe that his motion, filed within 120
days of entry of the circuit court’s sentencing order, was timely.

        In retroactively applying a non-constitutional rule of criminal procedure which
disadvantages a criminal defendant, 3 this Court has placed itself outside well-established
jurisprudence in both state and federal courts. “[C]ourts that use case-specific [retroactivity]

        2
         I concurred in the Court’s judgment in Keefer because under the particular facts and
circumstances of that case, the petitioner had actual notice that the 120-day time limitation for
filing his Rule 35(b) motion would begin to run on January 12, 2021. Keefer, __ W. Va. at __, 880
S.E.2d at 113 (Wooton, J., concurring, in part, and dissenting, in part).

        3
       There can be no serious argument that shortening the time limit within which a criminal
defendant can seek any form of post-trial relief is not a disadvantage.
                                                    3
analysis almost never find a newly declared state rule of criminal procedure to be sufficiently
important to the fact-finding process as to merit retroactive application to criminal cases on direct
review.” Andrew I. Haddad, Cruel Timing: Retroactive Application of State Criminal Procedural
Rules to Direct Appeals, 116 Colum. L. Rev. 1259, 1261 (2016) (emphasis added). Further, both
in Keefer and in the instant case, the majority appears wholly indifferent to the serious ex post
facto concerns raised by its retroactive application of a new rule “‘which in relation to the offense
or its consequences, alters the situation of a party to his disadvantage.’” State v. R.H., 166 W. Va.
280, 289, 273 S.E.2d 578, 584 (1980) (citation omitted), overruled on other grounds by State ex
rel. Cook v. Helms, 170 W. Va. 200, 292 S.E.2d 610 (1981).

        In my view, the Court’s decision today is, at best, manifestly unfair to the petitioner, and
at worst, violative of article III, section 4 of the West Virginia Constitution. For these reasons, I
respectfully dissent.

                                                 4