Fines First, Then Restitution, Unless the Court Orders Otherwise

State v. Knutson, Minn.Ct.App., 4/8/2013.  Ms. Knutson crashed her vehicle into another one, thereby injuring the other driver to the tune of ten plus grand in medical bills.  She was driving drunk and eventually she pled guilty to various counts of negligent criminal vehicular injury.  At sentencing, the district court ordered Ms. Knutson to pay fines and fees of roughly eleven hundred dollars,and kept open the amount of restitution.  The same day as her sentencing, Ms. Knutson signed an agreement with the court administrator to pay these fines and fees according to an installment plan.  She actually paid in a bit more than she owed  in fines and fees.

All of which the court administrator disbursed to the other driver and medical insurer.  Adding insult to injury the court administrator then informed Ms. Knutson that, oh by the way, you still owe the eleven hundred some dollars in fines and fees.  (As it happened, because Ms. Knutson had settled the civil claims arising out of the crash she actually didn’t owe any restitution.  State v. Arends, 786 N.W.2d 885 (Minn.Ct.App., 2010).)  Ms. Knutson complained about this, saying that she’d already paid these fines and fees and that the court administrator could not just send that money off somewhere else.  She prevails on this claim, on the basis of this sentence from the restitution statute, Minn.Stat. 611A.04, subd. 4:

When the court orders both the payment of restitution and the payment of a fine and the defendant does not pay the entire amount of court-ordered restitution and the fine at the same time, the court may order that all restitution shall be paid before the fine is paid.

The court of appeals says that Ms. Knutson wins because the district court had not ordered that restitution be paid before any fines and fees.  By implication, this sentence puts filling the court’s coffers ahead of any victim.  (Whether this sentence would permit the trial court to “split the pot” or in some other way divvy up the payments between the court and victims is left to another day.)  Not having done so, the court administrator had no authority to apply Ms. Knutson’s payments to any restitution obligation.