A Stay of Adjudication Under Minn.Stat. 152.18 Starts The Two Year Limitations Clock

Dupey v. State, Minn.Ct.App., 10/27/2014.  Mr. Dupey pled guilty to a fifth degree drugs crime.  The trial court did not enter a judgment of guilty but, instead, deferred further proceedings and placed him on probation.  Minn.Stat. 152.18.  Some four years later, Mr. Dupey petitioned the court for post-conviction relief, asking to be allowed to withdraw his guilty plea.  (In the interim he had violated probation and had a prison sentence imposed.)  A post conviction petition must be filed within two years of of entry of judgment of conviction or sentence if no direct appeal has been filed.  Minn.Stat. 590.01, subd. 4.  The post conviction court summarily dismissed the petition because it had not been filed within this two year limit.

Mr. Dupey said, no, the two years doesn’t start until the trial court revoked the stay of adjudication, and that counting from that date he beat the clock by exactly one day.  The court of appeals rejects this interpretation, saying  that a stay of adjudication is itself a “sentence.”  The court of appeals reaches this conclusion, in part, by reliance upon State v. Lee, 706 N.W.2d 491 (Minn. 2005) where the state and the defense argued exactly the opposite of what they are arguing here for Mr. Dupey.  This is, in Lee, the defense said that a stay of adjudication “is more like a sentence than it is like a pretrial order;” and the state said that “a sentence requires a conviction and in the absence of a conviction there is no sentence.”  A year later, the supreme court issued an Order – not an opinion – that said that appeals from stays of adjudication in felony cases were to be treated as appeals from sentencings.  And, back in 2001, the court of appeals had said:

Logic dictates that whether a district court (1) executes a sentence and incarcerates a person, (2) stays execution or imposition of a sentence coupled with terms of probation that may include incarceration up to 12 months, or (3) stays adjudication of guilt but imposes a sentence consisting of terms of probation that may include incarceration up to 12 months, that each disposition is a sentence.

The court of appeals affirms the summary dismissal.