Woodard v. State

609 N.E.2d 1185, 1993 Ind. App. LEXIS 177, 1993 WL 59285
CourtIndiana Court of Appeals
DecidedMarch 9, 1993
Docket34A02-9208-PC-00397
StatusPublished
Cited by5 cases

This text of 609 N.E.2d 1185 (Woodard v. State) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Indiana Court of Appeals primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Woodard v. State, 609 N.E.2d 1185, 1993 Ind. App. LEXIS 177, 1993 WL 59285 (Ind. Ct. App. 1993).

Opinion

SHIELDS, Judge.

Brenda E. Woodard appeals an adverse judgment on her petition for post-conviction relief. She also seeks review of her sentencing judgment. We affirm in part and reverse in part.

ISSUES

1. Did Woodard meet her burden of proof under White v. State (1986), Ind., 497 N.E.2d 893?
2. Are Woodard's aggravated and consecutive sentences unreasonable?

FACTS

During voir dire, Woodard requested leave of court to withdraw her previously entered pleas of not guilty and to enter pleas of guilty to five counts of dealing in cocaine, a class B felony. See IC 85-48-4-1(1) (1992 Supp.). The court granted the motion, the pleas were entered and accepted, and the State dismissed five other counts-four counts of maintaining a common nuisance, a class D felony, and one count of dealing in marijuana, a class A misdemeanor. At Woodard's sentencing hearing she orally requested leave to withdraw her guilty pleas 1 She testified she was making the motion because she did not realize she would not be sentenced at the time her pleas were accepted and because, when she entered her pleas, she had not had sufficient time to "get the opinion of [her] family members as to whether or not entering into a guilty plea under those circumstances would be in [her] best interest." Record at 196. The trial court denied her motion.

At the conclusion of Woodard's sentencing hearing the trial court imposed five consecutively-served fifteen-year sentences.

Woodard filed a petition for post-convietion relief in which she asserted she had not been advised of the possibility of consecutive sentences and, further, her sentences were manifestly unreasonable.

The parties concede, and the post-conviction court found, that the record reveals that Woodard was not advised on the record of the possibility of consecutive sentences. Woodard's only witness at her post-conviction hearing was her guilty plea attorney. He testified he was unable to remember whether he had specifically discussed the possibility of consecutive sentences with Woodard. However, he also stated:

At intervals, or at points prior to the trial, and I'm sure at the point when we were contemplating, uh, discontinuing the trial, uh, there was always the specter of multiple sentences or consecutive sentences as a part of the risk of convietion of the charges. And the possibility of getting charge-sentences concurrent rather than the risk of consecutive charges was a-a factor, or a-a matter of great consideration in-in uh, trying to deal with the case. So, it would not have been possible to have-for the case to have evolved as it did absent a discussion of uh, consecutive versus concurrent sentences.

Supplemental Record at 50-51. Further, Woodard's guilty plea attorney testified that some time before her trial was set he discussed a possible plea with Woodard and either gave or showed her a copy of the proposed Recommendation of Plea Bargain. The proposed Recommendation contained the recommendation that Woodard receive one two-year sentence, three ten-year sentences and two fifteen-year sentences. In addition, it was recommended that one of *1187 the fifteen-year sentences be served consecutive to the three ten-year sentences.

The post-conviction court denied Woodard relief and she appeals.

DISCUSSION AND DECISION

I

Woodard recognizes that she had the burden of proving that the trial court's failure to give the requisite statutory advisement rendered her pleas involuntary or unintelligent. See White v. State (1986), Ind., 497 N.E.2d 893, 905 (petitioner must prove that the "trial judge's failure to make a full inquiry in accordance with [the applicable statute] rendered [her] decision involuntary or unintelligent"). However, she fails to recognize that the record is devoid of any claim that Woodard did not know the possibility of consecutive sentences existed, as well as any claim that if Woodard had known of the possibility, it would have changed her decision to plead guilty. 2 Further, the record contains the testimony of her guilty plea counsel and the Recommendation from which the post-conviction court reasonably concluded that she was aware of the possibility of consecutive sentences despite the guilty plea court's omission.

Thus, as in White,

[Woodard] alleges only a violation of Ind. Code § 85-85-1-2(a); [she] does not claim any other circumstances which might call into question [her] repeated assertions to the judge who took [her] plea that [she] was guilty and that [she] had decided, voluntarily, that it was in [her] best interests to plead guilty. [Her] claim is an inadequate basis for vacating [her] conviction.

Id. at 906.

The post-conviction court properly denied Woodard's petition for relief.

IL.

Woodard claims her aggravated fifteen-year sentences, ordered consecutively served, for each of her five convictions of dealing in cocaine, are manifestly unreasonable. The five convictions were for controlled sales of cocaine to one individual on December 1, 1988, and for controlled sales to a second individual on December 13 and 14, 1988, and on January 10 and 11, 1989.

Ind. Appellate Rule 17 provides for appellate review of any statutorily authorized sentence that is "manifestly unreasonable in light of the nature of the offense and character of the offender." App.R. 17(B)(1). It further provides that "[a] sentence is not manifestly unreasonable unless no reasonable person could find such sentence appropriate to the particular offense and offender for which such sentence was imposed." Id.

In sentencing Woodard the guilty plea court recited as aggravating factors that the offenses involved repeated dealing in cocaine and that Woodard had numerous arrests and convictions,

starting back in as early as 1974 and continuing through March of 1987 when she had a conviction for possession of a schedule four controlled substance as a Class D felony. Uh, 1986 the conviction for Theft which was one of; one, two, three, four, five prior, or five other six other, seven other convictions for theft.

Record at 225. The court then aggravated the presumptive ten-year sentence for each of Woodard's class B felony convictions by five additional years and ordered each sentence served consecutively.

Woodard argues that because each of her convictions resulted from controlled buys in a state-sponsored sting operation, the rationale of Beno v. State (1991), Ind., 581 N.E.2d 922, is controlling. In Beno, our supreme court, Justice Givan dissent ing, addressed the reasonableness of aggravated, consecutive sentences for dealing in cocaine, a class A felony, dealing in cocaine, a class B felony, and maintaining a common nuisance, a class D felony.

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609 N.E.2d 1185, 1993 Ind. App. LEXIS 177, 1993 WL 59285, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/woodard-v-state-indctapp-1993.