State v. Nath

114 P.3d 142, 141 Idaho 584, 2005 Ida. App. LEXIS 26
CourtIdaho Court of Appeals
DecidedMarch 3, 2005
Docket30002
StatusPublished
Cited by11 cases

This text of 114 P.3d 142 (State v. Nath) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Idaho Court of Appeals primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State v. Nath, 114 P.3d 142, 141 Idaho 584, 2005 Ida. App. LEXIS 26 (Idaho Ct. App. 2005).

Opinion

LANSING, Judge.

Arvind Nath appeals the district court’s order denying Nath’s motion to withdraw his guilty plea to attempted custody interference. Nath contends that his guilty plea was invalid because he was coerced into pleading guilty in light of the circumstances he was facing at the time he entered his plea. We affirm.

I.

FACTUAL & PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND

Nath and his wife, Paige, have a daughter who was born in 1987. Paige’s relatives, the Yosts, cared for the child almost from her birth. In 1995, the Yosts obtained legal custody of the child and moved to Boise. In 1996, Nath was charged with second degree kidnapping after he took his daughter from a Boise yard where she was playing, put her in his van and tried to drive away with her. In 1997, a jury convicted Nath of the lesser included offense of attempted kidnapping. Nath absconded and did not appear for sentencing. He was later arrested in June 2000, and returned to Idaho. The district court imposed a unified ten-year sentence with one year determinate. Nath appealed the conviction, and the Idaho Supreme Court vacated the judgment of conviction and remanded for a new trial, holding, among other things, that the trial court committed reversible error when it took from the jury the question whether the Yosts had lawful custody of the child. See State v. Nath, 137 Idaho 712, 716-17, 52 P.3d 857, 861-62 (2002).

After remand, the State charged Nath by amended information with attempted second degree kidnapping. After Nath’s private counsel withdrew, Nath filed several pro se motions, including one for appointment of counsel, but failed to appear for scheduled hearings on the motions. Due to these failures to appear, at an August 11, 2003 pretrial conference the court had Nath taken into custody and set his bond at $100,000 in order to ensure Nath’s appearance at his scheduled trial.

On September 9, 2003, the parties presented the court with a stipulation for a plea agreement and an amended information charging Nath with felony attempted child custody interference. Under the agreement, Nath would receive a withheld judgment, would receive no additional jail time, and would not be ordered to pay any fine or restitution. Nath would be on unsupervised probation until October 3, 2005 (his daughter’s eighteenth birthday) and could serve his probationary period in Ohio, where he lived, but if he violated probation he would not be given credit for any jail time previously served. The agreement provided that Nath would be prohibited from contacting the Yosts at all or contacting his daughter unless she initiated contact. The district court accepted Nath’s plea and followed the plea agreement.

On September 15, 2003, Nath faxed from Ohio a motion to withdraw his guilty plea on the ground that is was not entered knowingly, intelligently, and voluntarily. Nath claimed that he was not informed of the full consequences of the plea and that it was made in a “coercive atmosphere.” Nath failed to appear for the first four hearings on the motion scheduled by the district court. At the fifth hearing date on December 15, 2003, Nath appeared, but because he presented two additional pro se motions to be considered with the motion to withdraw his guilty plea, the court needed additional time to consider the new motions, and the court had Nath taken into custody on a $100,000 bond to ensure his appearance at the December 23, 2003 hearing. At the hearing, Nath testified that at the time of the plea, he was worried about his wife’s mental condition and his mother’s extremely high blood pressure. Defense counsel also argued that at the time of the plea Nath had felt threatened and intimidated by the court due to “treatment he had received in past court appearances.” The district court denied Nath’s motion to withdraw his plea, concluding that it was *586 made knowingly, intelligently, and voluntarily-

Nath appeals, contending that the district court erred in denying his motion to withdraw his guilty plea because the plea was coerced and therefore involuntary.

II.

ANALYSIS

A motion to withdraw a guilty plea is governed by Idaho Criminal Rule 33(c), which allows the withdrawal of a guilty plea after sentencing “to correct manifest injustice.” The burden is on the defendant to show that a manifest injustice would result if the motion to withdraw the guilty plea were denied. State v. Gomez, 124 Idaho 177, 178, 857 P.2d 656, 657 (Ct.App.1993). Whether to grant a motion to withdraw a guilty plea lies in the discretion of the district court. State v. Moon, 140 Idaho 609, 610, 97 P.3d 476, 477 (Ct.App.2004); State v. Freeman, 110 Idaho 117, 121, 714 P.2d 86, 90 (Ct.App.1986). Appellate review is limited to determining whether the trial court abused its sound discretion. Moon, 140 Idaho at 610, 97 P.3d at 477; State v. Lavy, 121 Idaho 842, 844, 828 P.2d 871, 873 (1992).

Nath contends that his guilty plea was coerced and therefore was not taken in compliance with constitutional due process standards, which require that a guilty plea be entered voluntarily, knowingly, and intelligently. See State v. Huffman, 137 Idaho 886, 887, 55 P.3d 879, 880 (Ct.App.2002). In support of his contention that the plea was coerced, Nath cites the fact that, prior to the guilty plea, he was taken into custody on a $100,000 bond after traveling to Idaho for his trial. He testified at the hearing on his motion to withdraw the plea that his wife’s mental condition was deteriorating significantly during the time he was incarcerated awaiting his trial, that she was sleeping on the streets, that Nath was her sole caregiver, and that there was nothing he could do to help her as he was only able to contact her during jail visits and on the phone. He testified that his mother’s health was bad at the time as well. None of these facts were mentioned to the district court at the time that Nath pleaded guilty.

Nath argues by implication that he was coerced because pleading guilty was the only way for him to be released in order to tend to his wife and mother. A similar argument was addressed by this Court in Mata v. State, 124 Idaho 588, 861 P.2d 1253 (Ct.App.1993), where the defendant claimed that his guilty plea was involuntary because it was prompted by “extreme pressure.” Such pressure, he alleged, arose from his concern that his children were in foster care in Nebraska, and that he felt compelled to plead guilty in exchange for the release of his wife so that she would be able to retrieve the children. We held that because the pressures were not attributable to the State, and because Mata conceded at sentencing that the prosecution had probable cause to charge his wife, the anxiety and pressure generated by his family situation did not constitute impermissible coercion rendering his guilty plea involuntary.

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Bluebook (online)
114 P.3d 142, 141 Idaho 584, 2005 Ida. App. LEXIS 26, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-nath-idahoctapp-2005.