State v. Rhinehart

430 S.E.2d 536, 312 S.C. 36, 1993 S.C. App. LEXIS 81

• Court: Court of Appeals of South Carolina
• Decided: May 3, 1993
• Docket: 2007
• Status: Published

Opinions

Goolsby, Judge:

After Charles Rhinehart entered a plea of guilty to an indictment charging him with receiving stolen goods, the trial court sentenced him to four years imprisonment, suspended the term of imprisonment, and placed him on probation for two years with the condition that he perform 200 hours of public service. Several weeks later, Rhinehart appeared before the trial court at which time the solicitor requested the trial court to require Rhinehart to make restitution to the victim because the items stolen from the victim had not been returned. Following the hearing, the trial court issued an order making restitution a condition of Rhinehart’s probation. The trial court did not specify the particular amount that Rhine-hart was to pay; rather, it left the amount for the solicitor to determine. Rhinehart’s appeal contests on jurisdictional grounds the trial court’s adding restitution as a condition of probation. It also challenges the trial court’s leaving the amount of restitution for the solicitor’s determination. We reverse.

I.

Rhinehart’s original sentence resulted from a plea bargain. The trial court, as we gather, accepted the plea bargain. Part of the plea bargain, as the sentencing judge recognized and as Rhinehart understood, was that there would be no restitution.¹

While a trial court, in a proper case, has jurisdiction, under section 24-21-430 of the South Carolina Code of Laws (Supp. 1992), “[to] modify the conditions of probation,” that is, it has the power to alter or abate or limit the conditions of probation it has theretofore imposed, it does not have jurisdiction by virtue of section 24-21-430 to add, as a new condition of probation, a condition that the State expressly plea bargained away with court approval, particularly after the sentence, as here, has gone into execution and the term at which the sentence was imposed has ended. See State v. Best, 257 S.C. 361, 186 S.E. (2d) 272 (1972) (the court lacks subject matter jurisdiction to modify, change, or amend a sentence after adjournment of the term of court at which the court imposed the sentence).

If what the trial court did here were proper, the State and defendant A could engage in plea bargaining; they could agree A would plead guilty to the offense charged in the indictment and the State would recommend to the sentencing judge probation and the condition of probation that A not be required to pay a fine in one or several sums as directed by the court; the court could expressly approve the plea bargain in its entirety; the court could then place A on probation and not impose, as a condition of probation, the condition that A pay a fine in one or several sums as directed by the court; and months, even years, later the State, notwithstanding the plea bargain, could bring A back into the trial court and ask it to modify the conditions of A’s probation by requiring A “[to] pay a fine in one or several sums as directed by the court,” all the while pointing to section 24-21-430 as authority for the trial court to impose the condition.²

The state is bound by the bargain that it made to obtain Rhinehart’s guilty plea. See Santobello v. New York, 404 U.S. 257, 92 S.Ct. 495, 30 L.Ed. (2d) 427 (1971) (where a guilty plea is induced by prosecutorial promises, those promises must be fulfilled); State v. Thompson, 278 S.C. 1, 292 S.E. (2d) 581 (1982) (when an accused pleads guilty upon a promise of the prosecutor, the agreement must be fulfilled), overruled on other grounds, State v. Torrence, 305 S.C. 45, 406 S.E. (2d) 315 (1991) (Toal, J., concurring). The trial court, having accepted the plea agreement, must honor it also. See 22 C.J.S. Criminal Law § 370 at 438 (1989) (“[0]nee [a] court has accepted a plea agreement, it is bound to honor its promise to perform the agreement, insofar as the terms of the agreement are within the power of the court to order.”).

II.

We do not reach the delegation issue, but were we to do so we would agree with Judge Littlejohn’s dissent in this regard.

Reversed.

Cureton, J., concurs. Littlejohn, Acting J., dissents in a separate opinion.

1 Twice the solicitor told the sentencing judge during the guilty plea proceedings that “there is a recommendation.” The second time, the solicitor prefaced her remark with, “Yes, sir, there is no restitution.”

After the solicitor told the judge the second time that she had a recommendation to make, the judge asked Rhinehart, “Do you know what it is?” Rhinehart replied, “No, sir.”

The judge then inquired, “They’ve not told you what they gone [sic] recommend?”

Rhinehart answered, “Well, she said, she said probation and no restitution.”

The judge said, “Well, there is no restitution.”

Rhinehart said, “Okay.”

Faithful to the plea bargain and apparently concluding that the plea bargain provided a substantial and compelling reason not to order restitution, the judge did not impose restitution as a condition of probation. See S.C. CODE ANN. § 16-3-1530(D)(3) (1985) (“The judge shall order restitution at every sentencing for a crime against... property or as a condition of probation ..., unless the court finds a substantial and compelling reason not to order restitution.”).

2 Section 24-21-430(6) (Supp. 1992) authorizes a court to prescribe as a condition of probation that the probationer shall “pay a fine in one or several sums as directed by the court.”