Monday, February 27, 2012

Petition to Withdraw Guilty Plea Not Knaffla Barred but Nonetheless Without Merit

Barnslater v. State, Minn.Ct.App., 11/21/2011.  A defendant pleads guilty, but gets a stayed sentence.  Later, he violates probation and the trial court executes that sentence.  That same defendant starts an appeal of the probation revocation decision but then abandons that appeal.  Time goes by (but not too much of it).  Defendant files a post conviction petition that seeks to set aside the guilty plea.  The post conviction court says, not so fast.  You started an appeal once but gave it up.  No redo’s!
That’s pretty much all there is to this case.  The court of appeals corrects the post conviction court’s conclusion that Mr. Barnslater had had his chance to challenge the guilty plea during his abandoned appeal of the probation revocation decision.  Mr. Barnslater specifically stated in his notice of appeal from the probation revocation decision that he was only appealing from that decision.  So, it was not a “direct appeal” from his original conviction and not barred under the Knaffla “use it or lose it” rule.
Even so, Mr. Barnslater was not entitled to withdraw his guilty plea.

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