Patrick v. State
| Decision Date | 24 March 2005 |
| Docket Number | No. 04-69.,04-69. |
| Citation | 2005 WY 32,108 P.3d 838 |
| Parties | Ralph Douglas PATRICK, Appellant (Defendant), v. The STATE of Wyoming, Appellee (Plaintiff). |
| Court | Wyoming Supreme Court |
Representing Appellant: Ralph Douglas Patrick, pro se.
Representing Appellee: Patrick J. Crank, Wyoming Attorney General; Paul S. Rehurek, Deputy Attorney General; D. Michael Pauling, Senior Assistant Attorney General.
Before HILL, C.J., and GOLDEN, KITE, and VOIGT, JJ., and SKAVDAHL, D.J GOLDEN, Justice.
[¶ 1] Ralph Patrick (Patrick) appeals the district court's denial of his motion to amend his W.R.Cr.P. 35 motion for reduction of sentence. Patrick's motion for sentence reduction was filed approximately one year before his motion to amend. The district court denied the motion to amend finding that it was without jurisdiction to revise the sentence in Patrick's case. We reverse and remand.
[¶ 3] In 1999, Patrick was charged with several property crimes. Eventually, Patrick pled guilty to four felonies associated with these crimes: check fraud in violation of Wyo. Stat. Ann. § 6-3-702, forgery in violation of § 6-3-602, obtaining property by false pretenses in violation of § 6-3-407, and theft of identity in violation of § 6-3-901. Thereafter, on December 18, 2001, the district court sentenced Patrick to four terms of eight to ten years. The sentences were structured so that two of the terms would run concurrently and those terms would then run consecutive to the other two concurrent terms. It appears that no appeal was taken from those orders.
[¶ 4] On December 9, 2002, Patrick filed a pro se Motion for Reduction of Sentence together with documents outlining various programs he had participated in while incarcerated and detailing family hardships following his incarceration. In his motion, Patrick asked that all of his sentences be reduced to terms of two to four years or that all the previously imposed terms be made to run concurrently. Patrick did not request a hearing on the matter.
[¶ 5] On May 12, 2003, Patrick moved for appointment of counsel to assist him in presenting evidence supporting his motion for sentence reduction. The district court denied this motion, finding that a request for sentence reduction pursuant to W.R.Cr.P. 35 is not a "critical stage" of the proceedings and therefore Patrick was not entitled to counsel under the Sixth Amendment. On December 8, 2003, Patrick filed a Motion to Amend Sentence Reduction. Exhibits illustrating his activities after his December 9, 2002, motion for reduction accompanied his motion to amend. On January 8, 2004, the district court denied Patrick's motion to amend finding, "this court no longer has jurisdiction to amend the sentence in this matter" but providing no other explanation for this conclusion. Patrick appeals this denial. In effect, the order denying Patrick's motion to amend denied Patrick's motion for reduction of sentence; it is thus a final appealable order.
[¶ 6] A motion for a sentence reduction is an issue within the sound discretion of the sentencing court. Sweets v. State, 2001 WY 126, ¶ 9, 36 P.3d 1130, ¶ 9 (Wyo.2001) (quoting Mead v. State, 2 P.3d 564, 566 (Wyo.2000)). Nevertheless, this Court reviews jurisdictional matters, which present questions of law, de novo. See Padilla v. State, 2004 WY 66 ¶ 5, 91 P.3d 920, ¶ 5 (Wyo.2004).
[¶ 7] We begin by considering this Court's jurisdiction because the State asserts that we are without jurisdiction to hear this appeal. In making this claim, the State argues that Patrick's motion was deemed denied after ninety days, and because Patrick did not appeal within thirty days of that denial, we do not have jurisdiction. Rule 1(a) of the Wyoming Rules of Criminal Procedure provides that when a procedure is not established by the rules of criminal procedure, the Wyoming Rules of Civil Procedure shall govern. Rule 6(c)(2) of the Wyoming Rules of Civil Procedure provides that a "motion not determined within 90 days after filing shall be deemed denied." The State contends that this rule of civil procedure applies to Rule 35 motions for reduction of sentence. Although this is a tempting argument due to the certainty and efficiency application the deemed denied rule would provide, we cannot agree that these procedures control.
[¶ 8] Specifically, the rules of criminal procedure do allow the rules of civil procedure to apply but only to questions not governed by criminal procedure rules. Padilla, ¶ 6-8. Rule 35 specifies that the court shall determine the motion within a reasonable time. The obligatory language of this rule strongly suggests that a district court may not simply decide not to rule on such a motion, but instead it is required to make a ruling on the motion. While a "reasonable time" is not as precise as the ninety day deemed denied period, Rule 35 does provide a process "established by the rules of criminal procedure."
[¶ 9] Additionally, the purposes of Rule 35 and the broad discretion a district court enjoys over such motions would also seem to indicate that the deemed denied rule not apply. The purpose of Rule 35 "is to give a convicted defendant a second round before the sentencing judge (a second bite at the apple as it were) and to give the judge the opportunity to reconsider the original sentence in light of any further information about the defendant." Nelson v. State, 733 P.2d 1034, 1035 (Wyo.1987). The second chance provided by this rule is for the defendant to get in front of the sentencing judge to give that judge the opportunity to reconsider the sentence on its merits. The sentencing judge is in the best position to reconsider the sentence imposed and decide in its discretion whether to grant the motion, not this Court on any resulting appeal from a deemed denied motion. We merely review those decisions for an abuse of discretion once the district court has applied its discretion and determined the motion on its merits. Application of the deemed denied rule thwarts this process. We therefore determine that the deemed denied rule does not apply, and we have jurisdiction to consider this appeal.
[¶ 10] Motions to reduce a sentence may be brought pursuant to W.R.Cr.P. 35, which provides:
While the rule does impose a one-year time limitation, a plain reading of the rule indicates that the one-year limitation applies to the time in which a party must file a motion for reduction or the court must reduce a sentence in the absence of such a motion. Thereafter, once a motion is filed within the one-year time limit, the district court has a reasonable time to determine the motion. Accordingly, simply failing to rule on a validly filed motion within one year does not per se deny the district court jurisdiction to rule on the motion.
[¶ 11] Prior versions of Rule 35 did present some confusion about whether the motion must simply be filed before the conclusion of the time period or whether a court must actually rule on the motion within the time limit. We explained this confusion in Arland v. State, 788 P.2d 1125 (Wyo.1990).1 There we noted that a split had developed in the federal circuits regarding the interpretation of the federal version of Rule 35. Several circuits had determined that jurisdiction was met by filing the motion within the time limit and others determined that a ruling on the motion was required within the time limit. Id. at 1127. The difference resulted from some of the courts giving a literal interpretation to the language of the rule thus requiring a decision within the time limit, while others applied a non-literal interpretation requiring only a motion within that period. Id. To settle the dispute the federal rule was amended and the committee notes explained:
This amendment to Rule 35(b) conforms its language to the nonliteral interpretation which most courts have already placed upon the rule, namely, that it suffices that the defendant's motion was made within the 120 days and that the court determines the motion within a reasonable time thereafter. United States v. DeMier, 671 F.2d 1200 (8th Cir.1982); United States v. Smith, 650 F.2d 206 (9th Cir.1981); United States v. Johnson, 634...
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