By Dan Heilman
BridgeTower Media Newswires
MINNEAPOLIS, MN — When someone commits a variety of crimes in the process of the same criminal act, can he be prosecuted for them separately? Moreover, can his guilty plea be withdrawn based on his state of mind during trial?
Those were among the questions at issue in a Minnesota Court of Appeals case published earlier this month. The case had to do with the first-degree burglary prosecution of Cass County resident David James Jones.
The case began on an October morning in 2016 when police responded to a trespassing report at a boarded-up Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe tribal house in the town of Cass Lake. Officers saw that one board was pulled off the house, and it appeared that people were inside.
After a housing employee unlocked the back door, officers found Jones lying on a cot in one of the bedrooms — with a .22 caliber pistol on the floor next to him.
When Jones was handcuffed and searched, officers found a needle and money in his pants pocket. As officers searched the house, one noticed Jones moving around and ingesting several small bindles. The substance in the bindles was field-tested as heroin.
After receiving medical attention, Jones was taken to jail. A records check showed that he had a number of convictions sufficient to bar him from owning firearms as of earlier in the month.
Jones was charged with first-degree burglary, among other crimes. When he was in custody, the Cass County District Court granted him a one-day furlough so he could attend a funeral. The furlough stipulated that he would be subject to an escape charge if he didn’t return on time – which he didn’t.
Weeks later, when a Leech Lake Tribal Police officer stopped a car that had crossed the center line, Jones was in the back seat and was arrested after trying to give a false name to the officer.
Officers found seven hypodermic needles on Jones, who admitted he had swallowed a bindle of methamphetamine. He was charged with escape and with providing a false name to an officer.
In March 2017, a plea agreement was reached in both cases, providing that Jones would be released on electronic home monitoring.
If he lived up to the terms of his release and appeared at his sentencing, he would serve a 90-month sentence on the first-degree burglary charge and a 60-month concurrent sentence on the charge for possession of a firearm by an ineligible person; the escape charge would be dismissed at sentencing.
But if he didn’t meet those terms, he would serve 117 months as a guidelines sentence for burglary, a concurrent 60-month sentence on firearm charge, and a consecutive year and a day on the escape charge.
Jones’ hunger for drugs proved stronger than his desire for freedom.
Within hours of being sent home, he cut off his home-monitoring bracelet and went out in search of heroin. He was soon arrested, but then moved to withdraw his guilty pleas before sentencing, claiming that he had been under the influence of narcotics when he pleaded guilty, and that he lacked the capacity to testify regarding the facts of the offenses.
The judge said no, saying his claims were not credible, and Jones was sentenced according to the terms of his release.
Jones appealed, challenging the constitutionality of his guilty plea and claiming the District Court abused its discretion by denying his motion to withdraw the guilty pleas.
The appellate court didn’t see it that way.
The court found that Jones’ testimony at his plea hearing provided a sufficient factual basis to establish the elements of first-degree burglary under Minn. Stat. § 609.582, which provides that the state is not required to prove that appellant did not have a claim of right to be in the building — and because committing the crime of being an ineligible person in possession of a firearm is a sufficient independent crime committed inside the building.
The court cited the 2010 case State v. Raleigh, which provides that an appellant bears the burden of showing that his plea was invalid, but the validity of a plea is a question of law reviewed de novo.
“A manifest injustice, necessitating plea withdrawal, occurs whenever a guilty plea is not valid,” wrote Court of Appeals Judge John R. Rodenberg in his opinion. “For a guilty plea to be accurate, a factual basis must be established showing that the defendant’s conduct meets all elements of the offense to which he is pleading guilty ... If the defendant’s plea colloquy negates an essential element of the charged crime, the factual basis is inadequate.”
The court found, however, that just because Jones committed the crime of possessing an unauthorized weapon before entering the house doesn’t mean that he didn’t also commit the same crime while in the building. Under the state’s first-degree burglary statute, possession of a firearm by an ineligible person can serve as an independent crime.
The Court of Appeals also found that the District Court was within its discretion when it denied Jones’ presentencing motion to withdraw his guilty pleas.
“The point at which appellant in this case became aware that he did not have consent to enter the building,” wrote Rodenberg. “Appellant’s testimony provided a sufficient factual basis to establish that he entered the building without consent.”
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