State of Minnesota v. Wayne Patrick Clements

• Court: Court of Appeals of Minnesota
• Decided: January 5, 2026
• Docket: a241709
• Status: Unpublished

Opinion

This opinion is nonprecedential except as provided by Minn. R. Civ. App. P. 136.01, subd. 1(c).

STATE OF MINNESOTA IN COURT OF APPEALS A24-1709

State of Minnesota, Respondent,

vs.

Wayne Patrick Clements, Appellant.

Filed January 5, 2026 Reversed and remanded Jesson, Judge *

Carlton County District Court File No. 09-CR-24-206

Keith Ellison, Attorney General, St. Paul, Minnesota; and

Jeffrey L.H. Boucher, County Attorney, Carlton, Minnesota (for respondent)

Cathryn Middlebrook, Chief Appellate Public Defender, Sara J. Euteneuer, Assistant Public Defender, St. Paul, Minnesota (for appellant)

Considered and decided by Worke, Presiding Judge; Bratvold, Judge; and Jesson,

Judge.

* Retired judge of the Minnesota Court of Appeals, serving by appointment pursuant to Minn. Const. art. VI, § 10. NONPRECEDENTIAL OPINION

JESSON, Judge

In a postconviction petition, appellant Wayne Patrick Clements challenged his

sentence for second-degree assault with a dangerous weapon. The sentence was premised,

in part, on Clements’s criminal-history score—a score which reflected his prior felonies.

But prior felonies do not always impact one’s criminal history. The Minnesota Sentencing

Guidelines provide, in part, that 15 years after a felony sentence is discharged it cannot be

included in a criminal-history score. Minn. Sent’g Guidelines 2.B.1.c (2023). It “decays.”

Id.

The central issue in this appeal is whether aggregated felony sentences decay

individually or collectively for purposes of calculating criminal-history scores. We

conclude, as did the postconviction court, that they decay individually. But because we

conclude that the court used the wrong method to calculate how the individual sentences

decayed in this case—leading to an erroneous criminal-history score—we reverse and

remand for resentencing.

FACTS

In July of 2024, appellant Wayne Patrick Clements pleaded guilty to one count of

second-degree assault with a dangerous weapon. According to the complaint, Clements

hit a resident of the Minnesota Sex Offender Program with the leg of a chair. Clements

negotiated with respondent, State of Minnesota, for a fifty-month sentence in exchange for

his guilty plea. At the plea hearing, both parties acknowledged that Clements’s criminal-

history score would be either four or five points, meaning fifty months would fall within

2 the presumptive sentencing guidelines range regardless. 1 But the sentencing worksheet,

submitted to the court after Clements’s guilty plea but before sentencing, indicated that

Clements’s criminal-history score was seven, corresponding to a sentencing range of 49-

68 months.

The probation officer who prepared a presentence investigation report assigned

Clements two points for prior convictions for assault and terroristic threats which are not

at issue here. Clements’s remaining five points were derived from five convictions for

terroristic threats, all stemming from a single case. In that case, Clements pleaded guilty

to threatening five different Minnesota Sex Offender Program staff members on March 5,

2003. The district court sentenced Clements to five consecutive sentences of one year and

one day with jail credit for 468 days. The Department of Corrections then aggregated

Clements’s consecutive sentences, resulting in one 75-month sentence. 2 Based on this

aggregation, the sentencing worksheet indicated that each count of terroristic threats had

the same expiration date—June 9, 2009. Using this expiration date, none of Clements’s

five counts of terroristic threats had decayed, and consequently the worksheet stated that

Clements’s criminal-history score included a full point for each count.

1 The presumptive sentencing range for a criminal-history score of four is 39 to 54 months and the presumptive sentencing range for a criminal-history score of five is 44 to 61 months. Minn. Sent’g Guidelines 4.A (Supp. 2023). 2 Sentence aggregation is the process by which the Department of Corrections aggregates multiple “sentence durations into a single fixed sentence.” Minn. Sent’g Guidelines 2.F (Supp. 2023). “The aggregate term of imprisonment must be served before the aggregate supervised release period.” Id.

3 In August 2024, in accordance with the plea agreement, the district court sentenced

Clements to 50 months in prison. Pursuant to Minnesota Rule of Criminal Procedure 28.02,

subdivision 4(4), Clements filed a direct appeal but requested remand because

postconviction proceedings were necessary to develop a factual record of the calculation

of Clements’s criminal-history score. We remanded to the district court for further

proceedings. Clements then filed his petition for relief with the postconviction court,

arguing that his criminal-history score was incorrectly calculated because it included five

points for five counts of terroristic threats, at least four of which had decayed.

In its order denying Clements’s petition for postconviction relief, the court

acknowledged an error in the district court’s calculation of Clements’s criminal-history

score, which had included all five counts of terroristic threats. The postconviction court

concluded that Clements’s sentences decayed individually, but because Clements’s

sentences were aggregated, his first sentence did not decay until all incarceration periods

and the first supervised release period were served. Under this method, two of Clements’s

terroristic-threat convictions had decayed by the time of his current offense. Accordingly,

the postconviction court assigned a new criminal-history score of five points, reduced from

seven. But because the parties contemplated a criminal-history score of four or five, which

is consistent with the revised criminal-history score, the postconviction court concluded

Clements’s sentence was not illegal and so refused to resentence Clements.

We dissolved the stay of this appeal and Clements now argues that his sentence

remains illegal.

4 DECISION

The central issue before us is whether Clements’s prior felonies decay individually

or collectively after a period of supervised release. If they decay collectively, then

Clements’s criminal-history score is seven points, as none of his five counts of terroristic

threats have yet decayed. But if they decay individually, then we must address the issue

of how and when they decay.

Our review of these issues requires interpretation of the Minnesota Sentencing

Guidelines, which presents a question of law that we review de novo. State v. Scovel, 916

N.W.2d 550, 554 (Minn. 2018). We begin that review with a brief discussion of the

Guidelines before addressing whether Clements’s prior felony sentences decay

individually and, if so, how.

The Minnesota Sentencing Guidelines exist “to establish rational and consistent

sentencing standards that promote public safety, reduce sentencing disparity, and ensure

that the sanctions imposed for felony convictions are proportional to the severity of the

conviction offense and the offender’s criminal history.” Minn. Sent’g Guidelines 1.A

(2023) (articulating the statement of purpose and principles of the Minnesota Sentencing

Guidelines). The Guidelines provide a presumptive sentence and sentencing range for an

offense given a criminal-history score. Minn. Sent’g Guidelines 2.B (2023). Criminal-

history scores are calculated from “the sum of points from eligible: prior felonies; custody

status at the time of the offense; prior misdemeanors and gross misdemeanors; and prior

juvenile adjudications.” Id. But fifteen years after a felony is discharged, it decays and

5 cannot be included in a defendant’s criminal-history score. Minn. Sent’g Guidelines

2.B.1.c. As the Guidelines explain,

a prior felony sentence or stay of imposition following a felony conviction must not be used if all the following, to the extent applicable, occurred before the date of the current offense: (1) the prior felony sentence or stay of imposition expired or was discharged; (2) a period of fifteen years elapsed after the date of the initial sentence following the prior conviction; and (3) if the prior felony sentence was executed, a period of fifteen years elapsed after the date of expiration of the sentence.

Id. (emphasis added).

In a separate section, the sentencing guidelines also direct the Department of

Corrections to aggregate multiple consecutive sentences executed simultaneously by the

same court into a single fixed sentence. Minn. Sent’g Guidelines 2.F. Under this process,

the offender serves all of the aggregate terms of imprisonment first, then the offender serves

all the aggregate terms of supervised release. Id. Once aggregated, “[t]he two-thirds terms

of imprisonment are aggregated and served consecutively; then, the one-third supervised

release terms are aggregated and served consecutively as well.” Minn. Sent’g Guidelines

cmt. 2.F.02 (2023).

With this framework in mind, we turn to whether the consecutive sentences from

Clements’s prior felonies decay individually or collectively. The postconviction court

concluded that “despite the aggregation requirement, each felony sentence is unique and

should decay individually.” We agree. Once an individual has served the full duration of

an executed sentence, that sentence expires and begins to decay. Minn. Sent’g Guidelines

6 2.B.1.c. Aggregation by the Department of Corrections has no bearing on this process; it

is solely for purposes of administering the consecutive sentences and does not alter their

character as discrete sentences that expire and decay individually. This dichotomy reflects

the separate roles of the district court and the Department of Corrections. The decision to

impose a consecutive or concurrent sentence rests squarely with the district court and may

not be delegated to the Department of Corrections. See State v. Ford, 539 N.W.2d 214,

230 (Minn. 1995) (stating that the discretionary determination of whether multiple

sentences should run concurrently or consecutively may not be delegated to the Department

of Corrections). But the aggregation process itself is the “role of the commissioner of

corrections, not the district court.” State v. Schaefer-Bonovsky, No. A18-1908, 2019 WL

5884559, at *2 (Minn. App. Nov. 12, 2019). 3

This conclusion regarding individual decay does not end our analysis. We must

determine how the sentences decay. Here, the postconviction court began by treating each

of Clements’s felonies as having two distinct periods: an incarceration period and a

supervised release period. And the court determined that each sentence expires

individually upon the completion of the full aggregated period of incarceration and the

specific period of supervised release for that particular sentence. For instance, under this

method, Count I would expire after Clements served the period of incarceration for all five

counts and the period of supervised release for Count I, at which time the supervised release

3 Nonprecedential opinions are not binding authority but may be cited for their persuasive value. Minn. R. Civ. App. P. 136.01, subd. 1(c).

7 for Count II would begin. Using this method, the postconviction court concluded that

Clements’s criminal-history score was five points.

We disagree. Aggregating all of the imprisonment portions of the consecutive

sentences and setting a decay date only after the supervised release attributed to the

individual felony sentences does not accord the sentences true individual treatment. The

appropriate method for criminal-history score calculation treats individual consecutive

sentences as a whole, such that a sentence is deemed to have expired upon completion of

the pronounced duration and without separating its incarceration and supervision periods. 4

And once an entire sentence has expired, it starts to decay and the service of any

consecutive sentence begins at that same time, irrespective of how these sentences are

actually administered by the Department of Corrections. This method, we conclude, is the

appropriate approach for calculating the decay of felony sentences which are imposed

consecutively.

Using this approach, Count I of Clements’s prior sentences would have expired on

June 7, 2005, and would have decayed exactly fifteen years later, on June 7, 2020. The

4 Our method is consistent with one of the methods proposed by Clements on appeal. We further note that this method was not proposed by Clements during the postconviction proceedings. Clements also proposed two other methods for calculating his criminal- history score. Under the second method proposed by Clements, he requests that “the 2004 case [] be treated as a single sentence and only one point imposed” because “the Warrant of Commitment appears to indicate that this was treated as a single sentence.” Because Clements offers no other authority for this conclusion, and because we conclude here that each of Clements’s sentences decays individually, we decline to adopt this approach. Under the third method proposed by Clements, he suggests an approach wherein each period of imprisonment runs consecutively, but the periods of supervised release run concurrently after the conclusion of the first imprisonment date. Because we conclude that each sentence runs consecutively in its entirety, we also decline to adopt this approach.

8 sentence for Count II would then have begun on June 7, 2005, and expired on June 8, 2006.

Under this method, the sentences for Counts I-IV decayed before the date of the current

offense, October 4, 2023. Clements should therefore have received a single point for his

sentence on Count V, for a total criminal-history score of three.

To persuade us otherwise, the state argues that Clements’s criminal-history score

should instead be seven, as the original sentencing worksheet provided. Under the state’s

preferred method, the district court would treat all five aggregated sentences as expiring on

the date that the entire aggregated sentence is discharged. For the purposes of calculating

Clements’s sentence, this would result in all five points decaying fifteen years after June

9, 2009. Because June 9, 2024, is after the offense date of October 4, 2023, none of

Clements’s five sentences would have decayed under this method, and Clements would

receive five points for his terroristic-threat sentences, for a total of seven points. We remain

unpersuaded. This approach is premised on the collective decay of the aggregated

sentences, which we—like the postconviction court—reject for the reasons addressed

above.

Nor are we persuaded by the state’s contention that our approach “ignores the plain

and mandatory language of the [g]uidelines” requiring the Department of Corrections to

aggregate each sentence. The state is correct in noting that the Department of Corrections

is required to aggregate any consecutively executed sentences into a single fixed sentence.

Minn. Sent’g Guidelines 2.F. But we emphasize here again that those guidelines are for

9 purposes of administering consecutive sentences and have no bearing on when an

individual sentence expires for purpose of calculating criminal-history scores. Id. 5

Finally, the state contends that we should decline to adopt Clements’s

recommendation because “it requires credit for service of supervised release at a time when

the term of imprisonment is not yet complete.” We disagree. Simply because Clements

has additional sentences yet to be served, this does not mean he should not receive credit

for sentences he has already served. 6

In sum, we conclude that sentences decay individually and should not be aggregated

for the purposes of calculating criminal-history scores. The postconviction court here

determined that Clements’s criminal-history score was five points based on an erroneous

conclusion that it must “begin[] decay at the expiration of the aggregated sentence.” But

the aggregation of a sentence is irrelevant for the purposes of calculation of criminal-

history scores. Accordingly, Clements’s criminal-history score should be calculated at

three points. And because “a sentence based on an erroneous criminal[-history] score is an

5 In the alternative, the state invites us to adopt the method for calculating criminal-history scores used by the postconviction court, which we reject for the reasons set out above. 6 Clements also argues that the postconviction court abused its discretion by refusing to resentence Clements based on his revised criminal-history score, and similarly, that the postconviction court erred in denying his request to withdraw his plea agreement. Because we conclude that Clements should be resentenced based on a criminal-history score of three, we decline to reach these issues. Nor do we address the claim in Clements’s pro se supplemental brief in which he requests that his charges and sentence “be reduced.” The brief does not state a basis for relief, makes no legal arguments, and cites to no authority. This court does “not consider pro se claims on appeal that are unsupported by either arguments or citations to legal authority.” State v. Bartylla, 755 N.W.2d 8, 22 (Minn. 2008). We therefore conclude Clements’s claims are forfeited. State v. Reek, 942 N.W.2d 148, 166 (Minn. 2020).

10 illegal sentence,” we reverse and remand for resentencing with the correct criminal-history

score of three. State v. Maurstad, 733 N.W.2d 141, 146 (Minn. 2007).

Reversed and remanded.