Minnesota Supreme Court, 1982

Hanson v. State

Minnesota Supreme Court · Decided May 28, 1982 · Amdahl

320 N.W.2d 76; 1982 Minn. LEXIS 1581 (North Western Reporter, Second Series)

Counsel

C. Paul Jones, Public Defender, and Lawrence Hammerling, Asst. Public Defender, Minneapolis, for appellant., Warren Spannaus, Atty. Gen., St. Paul, Thomas L. Johnson, County Atty., Vernon E. Bergstrom, Chief, Appellate Division, Thomas A. Weist, Richard Osborne, and William Neiman, Asst. County Attys., and Beverly J. Wolfe, Staff Atty., Minneapolis, for respondent.

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Citation treatment has not been reviewed for this case. The notes below come from the citation graph and the Minnesota Revisor's amendment records, not from a review of how later courts treated this decision.

(as of 9/30/2026)

Last cited by a Minnesota appellate court in 1982, among the opinions in this site’s citation index.

Cites Minnesota statutes amended since this decision

Minn. Stat. § 590.01 — amended 1983
Minn. Stat. § 609.58 — amended 1983 (since repealed)

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Minnesota statutes cited

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Cases that cite this one

1 later published case cites this decision.

Hanson v. State (Minn. 1982)

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Opinion of the Court

AMDAHL, Chief Justice.

This is an appeal by Dennis Marlowe Hanson, age 44, from an order of the Hen-nepin County District Court denying his petition for postconviction relief in the form of resentencing according to the Minnesota Sentencing Guidelines. His petition was filed pursuant to the amendment to the Postconviction Remedy Act providing that persons convicted of and sentenced for crimes committed before May 1, 1980, may be resentenced according to the Sentencing Guidelines if they can establish that their early release from sentence would not present a danger to the public and would not be incompatible with the welfare of society. Minn.Stat. § 590.01, subd. 3 (Supp. 1981). The district court ruled that petitioner failed to establish that his early release would not present a danger to the public and would not be incompatible with the welfare of society. We affirm.

Petitioner was convicted in Hennepin County District Court in February 1980 of burglary, Minn.Stat. § 609.58, subd. 2(3) (1980), and was sentenced to a 5-year prison *77term to run concurrently with petitioner’s 20-year sentence for his 1973 conviction of burglary with a tool, on which parole was revoked. The 1980 conviction was petitioner’s sixth felony conviction, all of which have been for property offenses.

The expiration date for the sentence for the 1980 conviction is May 28, 1983, but petitioner is not scheduled to be released until October 22, 1983, because of his 20-year sentence imposed in 1973.

Petitioner’s criminal history score if he were to be resentenced for the 1980 conviction would be six (five felony points and one custody status point). The presumptive sentence for burglary under section 609.58, subd. 2(3), which is a severity level IV offense, by a person with this criminal history score is 41 months in prison.

The postconviction court declined to re-sentence petitioner for the 1980 conviction because it concluded that petitioner had failed to meet his burden of proving that his early release would not present a danger to the public and would not be incompatible with the welfare of society. Given petitioner’s record of recidivism, we affirm the district court’s decision. See Stahlberg v. State, 319 N.W.2d 12 (Minn., 1982); Phelps v. State, 319 N.W.2d 16 (Minn., 1982).

Affirmed.

Case-law data current through September 30, 2026. Source: CourtListener bulk data.