State v. Coles, Minn.S.Ct., 4/15/2015. Mr. Coles pled guilty to criminal sexual conduct in the second degree and first degree aggravated robbery. The plea agreement called for two 48 month consecutive sentences. The 48 month sentence on the CSC 2 was a greater than double departure from the presumptive sentence of 21 months. Eventually, the trial court executed those sentences.
Time goes by. A lot of time. More than two years of time, which becomes important. Mr. Coles filed a pro se something in the trial court in which he argued that the trial court had impermissibly sentenced him on the CSC 2, that there were none of the “severe aggravating circumstances” present to support a greater than double upward departure. State v. Evans, 311 N.W.2d 481 (Minn. 1981). Although Mr. Coles styled his pleading as a petition for post conviction relief he requested relief under Rule 27.03, subd 9, which authorizes a court to correct a sentence not authorized by law “at any time.” A post conviction, on the other hand, is subject to the two year limitations period. Both the trial court and the court of appeals decided that any relief had to come under the post conviction statute but that the limitations period had long since run.
The supreme court agrees. Writing for five members of the court, Chief Justice Gildea concluded that even though Mr. Coles insisted that he was only challenging the sentence that he was actually challenging his conviction. The majority reaches this conclusion by saying that a correction of Mr. Coles’ sentence – reducing the 48 month CSC sentence to the presumptive sentence of 21 months – would deprive the state of the benefit of its bargain, which was a 48 month sentence on that offense. That being so, then the state could respond to the correction by moving to withdraw the plea. That “implicates” the plea agreement and thus the conviction, so Rule 27 is the wrong source of relief. The rule only permits correction of a sentence.
Justices Page and Stras dissent, but for different reasons. In a bitter dissent reminiscent of retired Justice Paul Anderson, Justice Page says that the majority has taken the court down Lewis Carol’s rabbit hole.
“Curiouser and curiouser!” Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865), reprinted in The Annotated Alice 35 (Martin Gardner ed., Bramhall House 1960). The result reached by the court and the reasoning behind that result are flawed in a way that brings to mind Alice’s exclamation. The court holds that Coles’ motion to correct his sentence “is properly viewed as a petition for postconviction relief under Minn. Stat. § 590.01, not as a motion to correct a sentence under Rule 27.03.” This holding rests on the court’s unsupported conclusion that the “challenge to his sentence implicates”1 his conviction. Even though it is clear from Coles’ motion that he is not challenging his conviction, the court arrives at its conclusion by ignoring the fact that a mere change in Coles’ sentence does not of necessity require the sentencing court to take any action with respect to Coles’ conviction. With apologies to Alice, “Oh dear, what nonsense [the court is] talking!” Carroll, supra at 36.
Justice Page pointedly asserts that because there are no Evans factor to support the greater than double departure the sentence is “not authorized by law.” A sentence correction would not alter the conviction. It would only be if the state independently decided to seek to withdraw from the plea agreement would the conviction, itself, be “implicated.” Whether the state would seek to withdraw the plea is rank speculation, especially since Mr. Coles in fact, has served the very unlawful sentence that the trial court had imposed. More importantly, because the sentence is not an authorized one, the state isn’t entitled to any benefit of that illegal sentence.
Under the court’s decision, however, for the first time in our court’s history, we hold that there is in effect no remedy for the imposition of an illegal sentence. This result cannot stand. It contradicts our authority to correct an illegal sentence “at any time” under Rule 27.03, subdivision 9, runs counter to the Legislature’s “stated public policy of achieving uniformity in sentencing” by way of the sentencing guidelines, Maurstad, 733 N.W.2d at 146, and is inconsistent with our obligation to do justice.
In rather cryptic fashion Justice Stras’ dissent hints that he sees a conflict between the rule’s “at any time” language and the two year limitations period of the post conviction statute. He also thought that Mr. Cole’s whatever it was should have been considered under Rule 27.
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