No Right to Have Plea Agreement Accepted

State v. Klug, Minn.St.App., 11/18/2013.  The state charged Mr. Klug with two misdemeanors:  domestic assault and violation of a harassment restraining order.  Over the next year the two sides talked every now and then about settlement but eventually time ran out and the jury panel was standing around out in the hallway.  Both sides got serious at that point.  The state offered to dismiss one charge in exchange for a plea to the other.  Mr. Klug accepted that deal but the trial court would have none of it.  The judge told Mr. Klug he could either plead guilty to both misdemeanors or go to trial.  The judge was annoyed – not sure with whom – about the “effect of eleventh-hour negotiations on citizens [standing in the hall] who have cleared their calendars only to find that their service [was] not needed …”  Mr. Klug then entered a guilty plea to one of the charges and an Alford plea to the other.

On appeal, Mr. Klug complained that the trial court had abused its discretion by declining to accept the plea agreement reached on the morning of trial.  He said that he didn’t know of the judge’s policy of not accepting any plea agreement on the day of trial, but that had he known he would have come in the previous day and cut the deal.  Further, he said that he had a right to keep on negotiating right up to and including the day of trial.

The court of appeals rejects all of these claims.  The court says that there is no “right” to have a plea agreement accepted, on the day of trial or any other time.  Indeed, Rule 15.04, subd. 3(2) says only that the court may accept a plea agreement when the interest of justice would be served.  The rule goes on to list a bunch of factors that would be appropriate to consider in determining whether to accept a plea; the court fits the perceived inconvenience of the jury pool into the “efficient administration of justice” factor.  Ignorance of the court’s policy of no deals on trial day also didn’t cut it either. 

Mr. Klug also complained that he should have been permitted to withdraw the Alford plea because there was an inadequate factual basis for the plea.  Unwittingly or not, this framing of the issue seems to cut the legs out from under the rationale of Alford, that the sweet deal that accompanies an “I’m innocent!” guilty plea makes the whole thing make sense.  For Mr. Alford, against whom the state had strong evidence, “his interests require[d] entry of a guilty plea” because it avoided a possible death sentence.  On the other hand, Mr. Klug appears to have got nothing for his guilty pleas – the opinion does not say what the sentences were – that was not achievable by trial.  Neither the parties nor the court acknowledges this and, instead, focuses on the adequacy of a factual record to support the plea.  Efficiency, it seems, trumps logical jurisprudence.