In re Personal Restraint of Adams

• Court: Washington Supreme Court
• Writing for the Court: C. JOHNSON
• Citation: In re Personal Restraint of Adams, 178 Wash.2d 417, 309 P.3d 451 (Wash. 2013)
• Decision Date: 12 September 2013
• Docket Number: No. 87501–4.
• Parties: In the Matter of the Personal Restraint of Devon ADAMS, Petitioner.

178 Wash.2d 417

309 P.3d 451

In the Matter of the Personal Restraint of Devon ADAMS, Petitioner.

No. 87501–4.

Supreme Court of Washington, En Banc.

Argued May 7, 2013.

Decided Sept. 12, 2013.

Jeffrey Erwin Ellis, Oregon Capital Resource Center, Portland, OR, for Petitioner.

Dennis John McCurdy, King County Prosecutor's Office, Seattle, WA, for Respondent.

C. JOHNSON, J.

[178 Wash.2d 419]¶ 1 This case involves a claim under RCW 10.73.090 of facial invalidity in a 2000 judgment and sentence, based on an incorrectly calculated offender score. Devon Adams claims that, since he successfully challenged his offender score in a 2009 collateral attack and was resentenced, he should now be able to raise an ineffectiveness of trial counsel claim. The Court of Appeals, relying on our decisions in In re Personal Restraint of Coats, 173 Wash.2d 123, 267 P.3d 324 (2011), and In re Personal Restraint of Skylstad, 160 Wash.2d 944, 162 P.3d 413 (2007), dismissed his petition as time barred. The Court of Appeals also dismissed Adams's petition because it was successive. We affirm on the basis that Adams's petition is untimely.

Facts and Procedural History

¶ 2 In 1999, Devon Adams, who was drunk and high on “sherm,” was walking down a residential street in Seattle when he confronted Franklin Brown.¹ Brown was a 41–year–old man with significant developmental disabilities. He was known in his community as a peaceful man who would go door-to-door with his “weed-whacker” trying to earn money. Brown was unarmed, carrying only his weed-whacker and an extension cord. Adams started harassing Brown and patting down Brown's pockets, stating, “What have you got?” State's Resp. to Personal Restraint Petition (Response), App. B at 2. When Brown asked to be left alone, Adams pulled out a gun and held it to Brown's neck, stating, “[Y]ou don't know who you are messing with.” Response, App. C at 4. Adams lowered the gun and began to walk away, but then he turned around, shoved the gun into Brown's neck, and began firing. After Brown fell to the ground, Adams stood over him and fired several more rounds into his back as he lay there.

¶ 3 The State charged Adams with first degree murder and unlawful possession of a firearm. In 2000, Adams proceeded to trial. Adams's defense counsel, Michael Danko, sought and received jury instructions on the lesser offenses of second degree murder, first degree manslaughter, and second degree manslaughter. Danko also persuaded the court to provide a voluntary intoxication instruction. A jury found Adams guilty as charged.

¶ 4 Posttrial, defense counsel hired Dr. John P. Berberich to conduct a psychological evaluation of Adams for sentencing purposes. Based on Berberich's report, defense counsel sought an exceptional sentence on the basis of diminished capacity. The court found that although Adams's diminishedcapacity “does not [give] rise to a complete defense ... [it] plays a significant role in determining an appropriate sentence.” Response, App. T at 2. The trial court imposed an exceptional sentence below the standard range of 360 months. Adams did not appeal.

¶ 5 In 2001, Adams filed a personal restraint petition (PRP), asserting ineffective assistance of counsel. Adams, acting pro se, argued that defense counsel failed to inform him of an offer to plead guilty to second degree murder. The Court of Appeals dismissed the petition as conclusory and therefore “not sufficient to command judicial consideration and discussion.” Response, App. Z at 4.

¶ 6 In April 2009, represented by counsel, Adams filed a motion to vacate his judgment and sentence. He argued that his judgment and sentence was invalid on its face because his offender score had been miscalculated. The State agreed that some of Adams's juvenile adjudications had washed out and should not have been included in his offender score. In June 2009, the trial court resentenced Adams to 304 months based on the recalculated offender score. Adams again did not appeal.

¶ 7 Adams filed the current PRP in the Court of Appeals in October 2009. Adams argued that defense counsel was ineffective in failing to inform him of a second degree murder plea offer. Adams learned of the alleged plea offer after reading a Seattle Times article, published on April 7, 2000, reporting that the prosecutor “said he expected a plea of second-degree murder.” PRP, App. C. Adams also argued that defense counsel was ineffective in failing to investigate and develop a diminished capacity defense. Because his petition was filed within one year of his resentencing, Adams claimed his petition was timely under RCW 10.73.090. The Court of Appeals stayed the petition pending our decision in Coats, 173 Wash.2d 123, 267 P.3d 324. In 2012, the court lifted the stay and dismissed Adams's PRP as untimely and successive. We granted discretionary review.

Analysis

¶ 8 We must determine whether Adams's ineffective assistance claims are timely under RCW 10.73.090. Criminal defendants may file collateral attacks against their judgment and sentence but must do so within one year of their judgment being final. RCW 10.73.090(1) provides, “No petition or motion for collateral attack on a judgment and sentence in a criminal case may be filed more than one year after the judgment becomes final if the judgment and sentence is valid on its face and was rendered by a court of competent jurisdiction.” The time bar may be avoided if the petitioner can establish one of six exceptions listed under RCW 10.73.100.² Adams does not argue that his ineffective assistance claims fit one of these enumerated exceptions. Instead, he relies on the language in .090 that provides that a judgment must be “valid on its face” in order for the time bar to apply.

¶ 9 No dispute exists here that Adams's 2000 judgment and sentence was not “valid on its face” based on the offender score error. However, the parties dispute whether this facial invalidity permits Adams to raise an ineffective assistance of counsel claim in the current PRP. Adams asks us to hold that it does, arguing that the statute plainly says that the time bar does not start to run until a judgment is “valid on its face.” According to Adams, because his original judgment and sentence was not “valid on its face,” the collateral attack time bar is measured from the date of his 2009 judgment and sentence and therefore is timely. The State responds that per our decision in Coats, the time bar exception for a judgment and sentence that is not “valid on its face” does not act as a “super exception” that opens the door to all claims, including those that do not relate to the invalidity of the judgment and sentence.

¶ 10 As noted by the State, Adams advances a position similar to the one we rejected in Coats. In Coats, the petitioner filed a PRP 14 years after being sentenced, asserting that his judgment and sentence was facially invalid. He further argued that this facial invalidity allowed him to challenge the voluntariness of his guilty plea. The majority held that a misstatement of the statutory maximum sentence on the judgment and sentence did not constitute a facial invalidity. The two concurring opinions disagreed with the majority's conclusion that the error did not constitute a facial invalidity. However, all three opinions agreed that “[t]he exception for facially invalid judgments and sentences may not be used to circumvent the one-year time bar to personal restraint petitions relating to fair trial claims.” Coats, 173 Wash.2d at 141, 267 P.3d 324 (Chambers, J., majority), 145 (Madsen, C.J., concurring) (“the petitioner's main contention—that once the one-year time bar of RCW 10.73.090(1) is avoided as to one claim, it is automatically avoided as to all claims” is an “improper interpretation of the statute”), 164 (Stephens, J., concurring) (“the remedy for an invalid judgment and sentence is correction of the error that renders the judgment and sentence invalid, not opening the door to other time-barred claims”).

¶ 11 The conclusion in Coats is consistent with the rules of statutory construction that require that the statutory provisions be analyzed together in order to fulfill the intent of the statute. Advanced Silicon Materials, LLC v. Grant County, 156 Wash.2d 84, 89–90, 124 P.3d 294 (2005). In interpreting a statute, our primary goal is to give effect to the legislature's intent. To determine legislative intent, we first look to see if the meaning of the statute is plain on its face. “The plain meaning of a statute ‘is discerned from all that the Legislature has said in the statute and related statutes which disclose legislative intent about the provision in question.’ ” Advanced Silicon, 156 Wash.2d at 89–90, 124 P.3d 294(quoting Dep't of Ecology v. Campbell & Gwinn, LLC, 146 Wash.2d 1, 11, 43 P.3d 4 (2002)). That is, individual subsections are not addressed in isolation from the other sections of the statute, especially where to do so undermines the overall statutory purposes.

¶ 12 The statute at issue here, RCW 10.73.090, establishes a one-year time limit for raising claims as the general rule. A related statute, RCW 10.73.100, creates limited, narrow exceptions to the one-year time limit and further confines the issues that may be raised to solely those that the exceptions create. RCW 10.73.100 (“The time limit specified in RCW 10.73.090 does not apply to a petition or motion that is based solely on one or more of the following grounds.” (emphasis added)). Although the legislature did not list “exceptions” to the time limit in RCW 10.73.090, it did specify two preconditions in order for the time limit to apply: (1) that the judgment and sentence be “valid on its face” and (2) that the judgment and sentence be “rendered by a court of competent jurisdiction.” RCW 10.73.090(1).

¶ 13 We have referred to these two preconditions as additional, narrow “exceptions” to the time limit. See Coats, 173 Wash.2d at 141, 267 P.3d 324;see also In re Pers....