Court may permit state to withdraw from plea deal after mutual error

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In Brief

• Mistake occurred in aggravated departure during sentencing.
• Defendant argued that sentence should be significantly reduced.
• Lower court will decide if state can withdraw from plea agreement.

A Minnesota man convicted of possessing child pornography moved to reduce an aggravated departure in sentencing after he entered into an incorrect plea agreement. Reversing the district court, the Minnesota Court of Appeals concluded that the lower court could consider the state’s motion to withdraw from the plea agreement rather than reducing the sentence.

After law enforcement discovered that Matthew Paul Crow had cellphones containing pornography involving minors, he was charged with 24 counts of felony possession of pornographic works involving minors by a registered predatory offender. A week later, the state filed a separate complaint charging Crow with an additional 24 counts under the same statute, Minnesota Statutes section 617.247, subdivision 4(b) (2018). In this complaint, the state alleged that law enforcement found a tablet in Crow’s possession containing pornographic videos, images, and searches for similar material.

The parties reached a plea agreement in 2023. Crow agreed to plead guilty to one count in the first case and three counts in the second case. The parties agreed to consecutive executed prison sentences of 100, 84, 18, and 18 months, totaling 220 months. In exchange, the state agreed to dismiss the remaining 44 counts. Crow pleaded guilty to all four counts and the district court accepted the pleas.

At sentencing, the district court imposed the agreed-upon consecutive sentences. The court imposed a 100-month sentence in the first file using a criminal-history score of 6. In the second file, it imposed an 84-month sentence on count one using a criminal-history score of 7, and two consecutive 18-month sentences using a criminal-history score of 0.

Crow filed a postconviction petition arguing the 84-month sentence was an unlawful aggravated departure and should be reduced to 18 months. The state conceded a mutual error in law because the correct criminal-history score for that count should have been 0. However, it agued that the court should allow the state to withdraw from the plea agreement rather than reducing the sentence.

The postconviction court concluded Crow’s challenge implicated the plea agreement and scheduled a hearing. The postconviction court determined that the proper remedy was to vacate the 84-month sentence and impose an 18-month consecutive sentence instead.

The Minnesota Court of Appeals agreed with the state that the postconviction court abused its discretion when it found that the only remedy for Crow was to impose a guidelines sentence. The court considered rulings by the Minnesota Supreme Court regarding sentencing departures.

One issue that it considered was whether the decision in State v. Lewis was overruled by State v. Geller, because Geller was decided after. In Geller, the court remanded a case for imposition of the presumptive guidelines. However, the Minnesota Court of Appeals in the current case determined that Geller did not override the prior ruling in Lewis, in which the Supreme Court concluded that the district court could consider how sentence modification affected the plea agreement.

Finally, the Court of Appeals cited its own decision of State v. Rannow, finding that Crow’s case was not distinguishable. In Rannow, the defendant agreed to enter an Alford plea in exchange for the state dismissing some charges. The district court imposed consecutive sentences, and did not state its reasons for doing so on the record. The Minnesota Court of Appeals found that the court had abused its discretion, and, citing Geller, imposed the presumptive guidelines sentence — although the facts of the case were more analogous to Lewis.

However, the court also found that Rannow had been implicitly overruled by decisions of the Minnesota Supreme Court, in which the court concluded that challenges to sentences agreed upon due to plea agreements can implicate more than the sentence. As such, it had to determine how to resolve the appeal. Because the postconviction court applied Rannow, the Minnesota Court of Appeals found that the postconviction court erred.

“Crow asserts that he challenges only his sentence and not the validity of his plea agreement. But his challenge to the sentence imposed as part of this negotiated plea necessarily implicates more than the sentence alone,” Judge JaPaul Harris wrote. “Permitting Crow to now reduce that agreed-upon sentence would allow him to retain the benefit of the reduced charges while depriving the state of the benefit of its bargain—the agreed-upon longer sentence or convictions for multiple crimes and an even longer prison sentence.”

The Minnesota Court of Appeals reversed and remanded. The district court may consider the state’s motions to withdraw from the plea agreement if it does not find substantial and compelling reasons supporting an upward departure in the sentence agreed upon in the plea agreement.