Court Opinion

ID: 9668314
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 02:09:19.10968+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:15:44.565322
License: Public Domain

*829BROWN, P.J.
(dissenting). I wholeheartedly agree with the majority opinion in almost every respect. Sentencing courts should have all relevant information at their disposal. It is commendable that the majority has seen fit to denounce deliberate intrusions upon this particular responsibility.
I dissent, however, because I disagree with the remedy composed. The majority reverses the conviction and remands it for a new sentencing where the trial court will be able to resentence based on all relevant information. The majority acknowledges, though, that the defendant may very well move to withdraw his plea. I have no doubt that this acknowledgment is grounded upon the logic that since defendant relied on the plea agreement and since the plea agreement has been held to be “void” as a matter of public policy, therefore the plea was involuntary as a matter of law. Since the defendant has case law on his side, see State v. Riekkoff, 112 Wis. 2d 119, 332 N.W.2d 744 (1983), I would think that defendant’s success in withdrawing his plea is a foregone conclusion.
The defendant is in all likelihood, therefore, going to get a trial. The question is, should he be allowed to receive this benefit?
I think not. During postconviction motions and in his brief-in-chief, the defendant never claimed that the plea agreement was void as against public policy. Rather, he claimed that the plea agreement was a good one and one capable of enforcement. His complaint was only that the trial court read a presentence report which included all the charges that the parties had agreed could not be considered by the court. He further complained that the prosecutor breached the agreement by praising the report to the court. He did not raise the *830issue seized upon by the majority. Nor did the state use it in response.
Since McQuay never objected to sentencing on the grounds that the agreement itself was in error, McQuay waived his right of review on that issue. See Grant v. State, 73 Wis. 2d 441, 447, 243 N.W.2d 186, 190 (1976). As this court recently held, whether defendant, as here, seeks specific performance of a plea agreement, or whether, as in Grant, he seeks vacation of the plea agreement, the applicable burden is the same. State v. Jorgensen, 137 Wis. 2d 163, 168, 404 N.W.2d 66, 68 (Ct. App. 1987). Thus, contrary to the majority’s assertion, McQuay’s sentence is not void once this court sua sponte finds his plea agreement against public policy. The sentence may be voidable, but Grant demonstrates that the grounds for vacating the sentence must be raised below.
The majority decision is based on an issue of this court’s own making. It is like a supervisory decision because it deals with a public policy violation by the prosecutor, the defendant, and the trial court; it does not concern a substantive complaint by the defendant.1 *831It is a decision borne out of the need to protect the integrity of the court, rather than to vindicate the constitutional rights of the defendant. See United States v. Payner, 447 U.S. 727, 747 (1980) (Marshall, J., dissenting). It puts the constable on trial (in this case, the district attorney and judge), rather than simply the defendant. See id. at 734. The right that has been invaded here is the right by the public to have a judge consider all the relevant information; the defendant’s expectations are in no way legitimately involved.
Because it is in the nature of a supervisory opinion, the remedy may not be formulated in a vacuum. United States v. Hasting, 461 U.S. 499, 506 (1983). Rather, reversals must be exercised “with some caution.” See Payner, 447 U.S. at 734. Interests must be balanced. State v. Ruiz, 118 Wis. 2d 177, 202, 347 N.W.2d 352, 364 (1984). One of the interests that must be balanced is the trauma that the victims of these crimes would experience by having to appear at trial. Hasting, 461 U.S. at 507. Another factor would be the specter of forcing them to relive the “harrowing experiences now long past.” Id. A third factor is the practical problem of retrying these sensitive issues years after the events. While the majority believes that a balancing test should not be undertaken here, I believe it is necessary.
Undertaking the balancing test, I conclude the following. There were originally twenty-nine counts of first-degree sexual assault involving ten children. Most *832of the counts occurred in 1986 and all were of heinous nature. If a trial is granted, the trial (or trials) will not take place until at least three years after the events have occurred. These children, who were between the ages of eight to thirteen years of age when the assaults occurred now doubtlessly wish to put the incidents behind them and avoid the embarrassment and trauma of trial.2
I understand the other side in the balancing test. The public has a right to expect that its elected judges will be apprised of all the sundry activities the defendant has been involved in as a consideration in sentencing.3 If a trial were to take place and if defendant *833were to be convicted of even five of the counts, he could be sentenced for one hundred years.
After taking both sides into consideration, I would affirm the conviction which has this defendant in prison for thirty years followed by twenty years of consecutive probation. I am satisfied that putting these children through the trauma of trial, and the uncertainty of conviction based upon the amount of time passed is a public concern that overrides the public’s conter-vailing concern that a sentencing judge consider all the pertinent information. My conclusion is bolstered by the fact that the state, which represents the public, and which agreed at oral argument that the plea agreement violated public policy, nonetheless asked us to affirm the judgment in the interest of the victims. Accordingly, I dissent.

 he concurrence devotes much space to a discussion of supervisory opinions, concluding that I am wrong to assert a similarity between what the court does here and what other courts have done in their supervisory roles. I disagree. Plea bargains involve procedure and supervisory rules have been established to augment those procedures. See State v. Bangert, 131 Wis. 2d 246, 389 N.W.2d 12 (1986). These procedures may not be used to prevent the trial court from acquiring full knowledge of the character and behavior pattern of a convicted defendant before imposing sentence. Elias v. State, 93 Wis. 2d 278, 286, 286 N.W.2d 569, 562 (1980). To do so would be illegal. The term “illegal” is defined to mean “[a]gainst or not authorized by law.” Black’s Law Dictionary 673 (5th ed. 1979). Thus, when the majority claims it is circumscribing *831conduct unbecoming public policy, it is, in reality, fashioning a remedy to correct an illegal plea bargain. Additionally, its decision works to preserve judicial integrity. Therefore, I conclude that the majority decision is analogous to a supervisory opinion. It sua sponte points fingers at the prosecutor, the defendant, and the judge and says that the whole plea and resultant sentencing bargain process was contrary to Elias.

 The concurrence quotes the parent of one of the children saying that the defendant should be put in prison for as long as possible. That parent also said that a good sentence would be about forty years, rather than the twenty years that the state was recommending. Two other persons also raised objections but the objections were to the prosecution’s recommendation of twenty years. It is a long jump to infer, therefore, that these parents would be now so upset with the thirty-year term given that they would rather their children be witnesses at a trial three years later. The record shows that many of these children were severely traumatized; they were frightened of McQuay who said he would “get them.” They were experiencing nightmares. Now he is in prison. This is not to say that children should never be put on the witness stand years later in cases of this nature; but it is to say rather that an appellate court should not inteiject itself into the case, affecting the daily lives of many, when no one involved with the case has registered the complaint dealt with sua sponte by the court.

 Even had the trial court been constrained to take into account the dismissed charges, the same sentence may well have been meted out. At the postconviction hearing, the trial judge stated:
The only reason that this man got thirty is because there was a plea negotiation for him to get twenty. I tried. I tried as much as I could to restrain myself, and I did restrain myself, because this man did not put these children through the horrors of testimony and all the *833other things, and I think those are all useful things, and the reason that the district attorney made that plea negotiation, there’s many very, very good reasons that these kinds of cases ought to be resolved by plea negotiation, and much to Mr. McQuay’s credit he did do that, and he didn’t put these children through all kinds of horrors. That’s the only reason that I restrained myself and gave him the amount that I did.