State v. Franson
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State v. Franson
Opinion of the Court
Following his conviction of failing to register as a predatory offender, appellant argues that the district court lacked jurisdiction to impose a ten-year term of conditional release. We affirm.
FACTS
Appellant Michael Allen Franson was required to register as a predatory offender following his 1987 conviction of criminal sexual conduct. In 2009, he pleaded guilty to one count of failing to register as a predatory offender. The district court sentenced Franson to 15 months in prison, a mitigated durational departure, but failed to include the statutorily mandated conditional-release term. See
In 2016, while Franson was serving the conditional-release term of his sentence, he moved to correct his sentence, asking the district court to vacate the conditional-release term based on two recent supreme court decisions, Reynolds v. State ,
In Her , the supreme court held that a district court may not impose the ten-year conditional-release term for a conviction of failing to register as a predatory offender unless a jury finds or the defendant admits to being a risk-level-III offender.
The district court granted Franson's motion, in part, and ordered a resentencing hearing for a jury to determine if Franson was a risk-level-III offender at the time of the offense. Franson appealed the district court's decision to hold a resentencing hearing. A special-term panel of this court dismissed the appeal on the ground that it was premature. See Franson v. State , No. A16-1872 (Minn. App. Feb. 28, 2017) (order).
The district court held a resentencing hearing on September 25, 2017. Franson moved to terminate the proceedings and vacate the conditional-release term, arguing that the original complaint did not include any reference to his risk-level designation and that it was too late for the state to amend the complaint. In response, the state moved to amend the complaint. In a September 29, 2017 order, the district court denied the state's motion and terminated the proceedings, determining that, because the complaint did not allege that Franson was a risk-level-III offender, there was "no question for a jury to consider." Also on that date, the district court issued a second amended sentencing order stating that Franson had served all of his 15-month sentence and "there is no conditional release period following the executed prison term."
When the district court terminated the sentencing proceedings and declared the nonexistence of a conditional-release term, neither the district court nor the parties were aware that, nine days earlier, the supreme court had filed its decision in State v. Meger , in which it held that Her does not apply retroactively.
ISSUE
Did the district court have jurisdiction to reimpose the ten-year term of conditional release?
ANALYSIS
Franson argues that the district court lacked jurisdiction to reimpose conditional release after it removed the conditional-release term on the basis that Franson's sentence had expired.
For certain convictions, conditional release is mandatory and nonwaivable. State v. Calmes ,
Franson argues that his sentence expired when the district court removed the conditional-release term from his sentence because that was then the only remaining term. See State ex rel. Peterson v. Fabian ,
First, the supreme court's remand instructions in Meger and Her imply that a district court retains jurisdiction to correct a sentence that contains a particular conditional-release term or lacks a statutorily mandated conditional-release term. See Meger ,
On September 7, 2006, Meger was sentenced to 20 months in prison for failing to register as a predatory offender; four months later, after receiving a letter from the department of corrections that Meger was a risk-level-III offender, the district court amended the sentence to include a ten-year conditional-release term. Meger ,
We affirmed. State v. Meger , No. A15-1823,
Second, the district court's jurisdiction did not end when the district court removed Franson's conditional-release term.
Franson argues that Purdy ,
Similarly, in Martinek , the district court imposed a prison sentence but did not include a conditional-release term.
These cases do not control here. In both Purdy and Martinek , the defendants were not on notice that conditional release was a mandatory part of their sentences, and the district court did not amend the sentences to include conditional-release terms until after their sentences expired. Therefore, the conditional-release terms were imposed after the defendants developed a crystallized expectation of finality in their sentences. See Martinek ,
In Franson's case, the complaint referred to conditional release as a penalty for the charged offense, Franson's sentence was amended to include the conditional-release term less than three months after the original sentencing hearing, and conditional release was lawfully imposed while Franson was still serving the term of imprisonment. Despite the district court's September 29, 2017 order vacating conditional release, Franson "could not have developed a reasonable crystallized expectation *789of finality in a sentence that did not include a mandatory and nonwaivable condition." See id . Given the supreme court's decision in Meger that Her does not apply retroactively and the state's motion for reconsideration challenging the district court's order vacating conditional release, Franson did not have a crystallized expectation of finality in a sentence that did not include a conditional-release term.
DECISION
The district court had jurisdiction to reimpose the mandatory conditional-release term because the conditional-release term was authorized when it was imposed and Franson did not have a crystallized expectation of finality in a sentence that did not include a conditional-release term.
Affirmed.
Dissenting, Randall, Judge
Minn. R. Gen. Prac. 115.11 provides that, in civil actions, "[m]otions to reconsider are prohibited except by express permission of the court." The rules of criminal procedure do not expressly authorize motions for reconsideration, but they also do not preclude such motions, and the supreme court has recognized that the district court has authority to entertain such a motion before the state's time for appeal has expired. See State v. Montjoy ,
The district court did not use the term "vacate."
The supreme court assumed without deciding that it is the finality of the sentence that is the touchstone for determining retroactive effect, and it used the date on which Meger's amended sentence became final, i.e., "when the time to file an appeal of his amended sentence would have expired."
Conditional release is a mandatory part of a sentence. See State v. Brown ,
Retired judge of the Minnesota Court of Appeals, serving by appointment pursuant to Minn. Const. art. VI, § 10.
Dissenting Opinion
I respectfully dissent.
The facts and reasoning in this case are similar to this court's prior unpublished decisions in State v. Jones , No. A17-0632,
In Jones , we concluded that the district court divested itself of jurisdiction to resentence Jones and reimpose conditional release after "the district court had already granted [Jones's] motion to vacate the conditional-release term" based on State v. Her ,
Similarly, in Carlson , we held that Carlson's sentence expired when the district court vacated the conditional-release term after he completed his prison sentence and supervised release, because conditional release "was the last remaining condition of his sentence."
Applying the logical reasoning in these cases to Franson's case, the district court had lost jurisdiction when it vacated conditional release in the September 29, 2017 order, the last remaining condition of Franson's sentence. The district court expressly stated that the sentence had been "served and satisfied." The district court no longer had jurisdiction. Therefore, the *790district court did not have jurisdiction to reimpose the conditional-release term.
I would reverse and remand to the district court with instructions to vacate the conditional-release term.
Reference
- Full Case Name
- STATE of Minnesota v. Michael Allen FRANSON
- Cited By
- 2 cases
- Status
- Published