Restitution Statute Does Not Authorize Court To Order a Defendant To Sell Assets In Order to Pay Up.

State v. Alexander, Minn.Ct.App., 10/20/2014.  Mr. Alexander pled guilty to motor vehicle theft.  The vehicle that he stole was a brand new BMW.  By the time police found Mr. Alexander driving it, there was extensive damage to the vehicle, and instead of the four or five miles of a factory new car it had some fifteen hundred miles on the odometer.  Following a sentencing hearing, the trial court ordered Mr. Alexander to pay some sixteen thousand dollars in restitution to the dealer.  The court also ordered Mr. Alexander to raise some of that sixteen grand by selling his 1992 Mercedes E Class.  And, the court ordered  him to “fully pay” the public defender for the “cost of representation.”  At the time, Mr. Alexander was an unemployed college student whose only asset was a twenty-one year old Mercedes.  We don’t know whether it was a diesel or gas vehicle.  So, he appealed this restitution order. 

And wins some and loses some.  He lost on whether the state had presented enough evidence to prove the amount of restitution.  The dealer offered evidence of the cost of repairs to the beamer, and also said that it had to discount the value of the car by some ten thousand dollars in order to sell it; at fifteen hundred miles it’s not a “new car” anymore.  The trial court accepted all that and the appeals court found no abuse of discretion in doing so.

Next, Mr. Alexander complained that the trial court did not consider whether he had the ability to pay restitution.  The restitution statute says that the trial court has to “consider the defendant’s ability to pay.”  The court substitutes incantation for consideration.  Say the magic words and everything’s fine.   Unless a defendant presents additional evidence on that ability, the court’s primary source of information on ability to pay is from the presentence investigation.  If the trial court says that it saw that part of the PSI and “considered it” that satisfies the statute’s “consideration” requirement.  The court can say, “Yeah, I know all that, you’re not working, homeless, blah, blah, blah, but I’m still ordering you to pay.” and not expect to get reversed on appeal.

The PD fee is a separate statute with a different requirement.  Mr. Alexander gets a partial win on the public defender fees.  This statute requires the court to hold a hearing to determine the cost of the PD services, and whether a defendant  has the ability to pay that fee.  First, the trial court here held no such hearing – a generalized sentencing hearing doesn’t count – so no one had bothered to put a price tag on those services. Second, unlike the restitution statute which does not require that the court make findings, the court is required to make findings on a defendant’s ability to pay a PD fee.  So, Mr. Alexander gets a remand for the court to tidy up the record on this.

Finally, the Mercedes.  The restitution statute does not authorize the trial court to order a defendant to liquidate assets in order to raise cash to pay restitution.  Unpaid restitution already may be enforced by a civil action to collect it.  If the BMW dealer want’s the cash from the sale of Mr. Alexander’s twenty-one year old Mercedes it will have to go through that process.

It won’t be surprising to see the supreme court review this if given the opportunity.  Is this an Axelgerg [implied consent statute does not list a necessity defense so Ms. Axelberg, driving drunk for her life, can’t raise it] case or an Ali [replace “shall” with “may” in the life without possibility of release sentencing statute] case?