State v. Danh

516 N.W.2d 539, 1994 Minn. LEXIS 372, 1994 WL 195252
CourtSupreme Court of Minnesota
DecidedMay 20, 1994
DocketC1-93-86
StatusPublished
Cited by32 cases

This text of 516 N.W.2d 539 (State v. Danh) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Minnesota primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State v. Danh, 516 N.W.2d 539, 1994 Minn. LEXIS 372, 1994 WL 195252 (Mich. 1994).

Opinions

OPINION

KEITH, Chief Justice.

This case raises the issue of whether the trial court abused its discretion in refusing to allow appellant Hoang Muc Danh to withdraw his guilty plea prior to sentencing, where his plea was part of a “package deal” or contingent plea agreement involving more lenient sentences for three co-defendants, including appellant’s younger brother. We hold that, at the time of the guilty plea, the state must reveal to the trial court the contingent nature of “package deal” pleas, so that the trial court can determine if the defendant’s plea is voluntary. We conclude that, under the circumstances of this case, the defendant is entitled to a postconviction evidentiary hearing on the issue of the volun-tariness of his plea.

On April 12, 1992, appellant Hoang Muc Danh,1 then age 23, and several young men entered Toan Le’s home to “get even” with Le because they believed Le had beaten up their friend. While Danh waived a gun and told other people in the house to stay away, his 19 year-old brother, Giau Danh, and two others beat Le with a metal pipe and cut him with a machete.

Danh and his three co-defendants were charged in Olmsted County District Court with three counts of assault and three counts of burglary. Appellant was also charged with two counts of assault and two counts of tampering with a witness, after he allegedly warned Le not to testify against him. Shortly before trial, the state wrote to counsel for all the co-defendants, offering a plea agreement which was contingent upon all four co-defendants pleading. It required Danh to plead guilty to three charges of assault and one charge of tampering with a witness. His co-defendants were required to plead guilty to one charge of burglary each. The state agreed to dismiss the remainder of the charges and recommend a sentence of 114 months for Danh. The presumptive sentence [541]*541for Danh’s eo-defendants would have been 48 months in prison but the state agreed to recommend 20 years’ probation for each co-defendant.

Danh initially told his attorney that he would plead guilty, but on Monday, July 20, 1992, Danh informed his attorney that he had changed his mind. Danh’s brother then asked to speak with him alone. After this conversation, Danh pled guilty.

At the guilty plea hearing, the trial court conducted a thorough Rule 15.01 inquiry. See Minn.R.Crim.P. 15.01 (1994). Danh stated that he had had a full opportunity to discuss the plea with his attorney and that he understood English well enough to understand the plea petition. The trial court questioned Danh regarding coercion. Danh stated that no promises other than those contained in the guilty plea petition2 or stated in court had been made to him, and he affirmed that he had not been coerced into entering the plea. Based on Danh’s responses to these inquiries, the trial court accepted Danh’s plea of guilty. It is unclear to what extent the trial court was aware of the contingent nature of the plea at the time it was accepted.3 Neither party explicitly mentioned the contingent nature of the plea at any point in the guilty plea hearing.

On August 20, 1992, appellant moved the trial court to allow him to withdraw his guilty plea on the ground that it was involuntarily given. The trial court denied Danh’s motion on August 28, 1992. In its findings and order, dismissing Danh’s motion to withdraw, the trial court noted that Danh’s co-defendants were offered a “less punitive” agreement. It went on to state:

Certainly it would have been better to make a record of the fact that a favorable offer made to defendant’s younger brother was contingent upon this defendant accepting the offer made to him. In that way the defendant could have been examined specifically about that issue at the time of the plea. I should have directed a number of questions to Defendant on that issue in order to explore his attitude at the time of the plea.

The trial court further noted:

In this case the motion to withdraw the plea was timely. Defendant also makes a compelling argument that as the eldest male in this immigrant family, he was under pressure to obtain a favorable outcome for his younger brother. It was only after he spoke privately to his brother that he entered his plea.

Nonetheless, the trial court found that the plea was voluntarily made and that the government would be prejudiced by a withdrawal of the plea. The trial court noted that Danh’s brother would still receive the benefit of the plea bargain and that the state had a number of witnesses under subpoena and “one can infer a certain level of prejudice from the discharge of those subpoenas.”

On October 21, 1992, the trial court revoked Danh’s probation and executed a 36-month sentence for Danh’s earlier assault, perjury and theft convictions, which sentence was to run consecutively to the sentence for Danh’s most recent convictions. The following day the trial court sentenced Danh to 44, 65 and 68 months on the three assault convictions, which sentences were to run concurrently to one another. The court of appeals affirmed the trial court’s denial of Danh’s motion to withdraw a guilty plea, but amended Danh’s 68-month sentence to 60 months. [542]*542The court of appeals did not amend Danh’s 65-month sentence. State v. Danh, 500 N.W.2d 506, 511 (Minn.App.1993).

I.

This court has never addressed the issue of a contingent plea agreement in which a defendant agrees to plead guilty in exchange for leniency for a third party. “Package deal” plea bargains are more common in jurisdictions that routinely subject co-defendants to joint trials than in Minnesota where joint trials of co-defendants are relatively rare. See Minn.R.Crim.P. 17.03 (1994). “Package deal” agreements are generally dangerous because of the risk of coercion; this is particularly so in cases involving related third parties, where there is a risk that a defendant, who would otherwise exercise his or her right to a jury trial, will plead guilty out of a sense of family loyalty.

In Bordenkircher v. Hayes, 434 U.S. 357, 364 n. 8, 98 S.Ct. 663, 668-69 n. 8, 54 L.Ed.2d 604 (1978), the U.S. Supreme Court stated that these types of agreements “might pose a greater danger of inducing a false guilty plea by skewing the assessment of the risks a defendant must consider.” Other states and federal circuit courts hold that “package deal” agreements are not per se invalid. E.g., In re Ibarra, 34 Cal.3d 277, 193 Cal.Rptr. 538, 666 P.2d 980, 986 (Cal.1983); United States v. Marquez, 909 F.2d 738, 741 (2nd Cir.1990); See also Bruce A. Green, “Package” Plea Bargaining and the Prosecutor’s Duty of Good Faith, 25 Crim.L.Bull. 507, 516-521 (1989). However, several courts hold that this type of plea is per se involuntary if the prosecutor did not have probable cause to charge the third party. See, e.g., In re Ibarra, 193 Cal.Rptr. at 545, 666 P.2d at 987; United States v. Nuckols, 606 F.2d 566, 569 (5th Cir.1979).

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
516 N.W.2d 539, 1994 Minn. LEXIS 372, 1994 WL 195252, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-danh-minn-1994.