State v. Mead
| Decision Date | 22 April 2015 |
| Docket Number | No. 2014–K–1051.,2014–K–1051. |
| Citation | 165 So.3d 1044 |
| Parties | STATE of Louisiana v. Alvin MEAD. |
| Court | Court of Appeal of Louisiana — District of US |
165 So.3d 1044
STATE of Louisiana
v.
Alvin MEAD.
No. 2014–K–1051.
Court of Appeal of Louisiana, Fourth Circuit.
April 22, 2015.
Leon A. Cannizzaro, Jr., District Attorney, Andrew M. Pickett, Esq., Assistant District Attorney, Parish of Orleans, New Orleans, LA, for Respondent/State of Louisiana.
Alvin Mead, Angola, LA, Relator/Defendant.
(Court composed of Judge DENNIS R. BAGNERIS, SR., Judge ROLAND L. BELSOME, Judge PAUL A. BONIN ).
Opinion
PAUL A. BONIN, Judge.
Alvin Mead is serving a life-without-parole sentence at Angola. Found guilty of possessing a large amount of cocaine in 1999, Mr. Mead was then adjudicated a third-felony offender under the Habitual Offender Law. His most recent post-conviction filing in the district court is a motion to vacate an illegal sentence in which Mr. Mead claimed that deficiencies in the State's proof respecting the two predicate felonies charged in his multiple bill resulted in an illegal sentence being imposed. The district court, finding that the life-without-parole sentence imposed upon Mr. Mead was not illegal, denied his motion.
Mr. Mead timely filed an application for supervisory review. We directed the district attorney to respond to Mr. Mead's application and ordered the entire record of the district court proceedings filed with us. We grant the writ application, but, after our de novo review, we find that the district judge correctly ruled that the sentence imposed upon Mr. Mead is legal.
We further examined Mr. Mead's motion to determine its viability as an application for post-conviction relief and whether remand to the district court would be merited. We conclude, however, that his motion, construed as a PCR application, would be time-barred and, moreover, that the grounds asserted for relief would not be cognizable in such a proceeding.
Accordingly, we deny Mr. Mead the relief sought in his application and affirm the ruling denying his motion. We explain our decision in greater detail below.
I
At the outset we note that, unlike an application for post-conviction relief, a motion to correct an illegal sentence or, as styled here, a motion to vacate an illegal sentence is never time-barred. See La.C.Cr.P. art. 882 A (“An illegal sentence may be corrected at any time by the court that imposed the sentence or by an appellate court on review.”); State v. Campbell, 03–3035, p. 5 (La.7/6/04), 877 So.2d 112, 116. See also State ex rel. Smith v. Criminal Dist. Court, 93–1937 (La.11/18/94), 646 So.2d 367 (holding that the two-year limitations period for applications for post-conviction relief under La.C.Cr.P. art. 930.8, discussed in Part V–A, post, does not apply to motions to correct illegal sentences under Article 882 ). And thus prisoners are permitted to raise these motions long after their convictions and sentences have become final. See State ex rel. Burger v. State, 95–1578 (La.11/3/95), 661 So.2d 1373 ; State v. Edwards, 13–2497, p. 1 (La.2/21/14), 133 So.3d 1261, 1261–62. See also La.C.Cr.P. art. 882 cmt.(a) (“The phrase ‘at any time’ makes clear the court's authority to make a correction after the defendant has begun to serve [his] sentence.”); La.C.Cr.P. art. 922.
II
“A sentence is the penalty imposed by the court on a defendant upon a plea of guilty, upon a verdict of guilty, or upon a judgment of guilt.” La.C.Cr.P. art. 871 A. “A valid sentence must rest upon a valid and sufficient: (1) Statute; (2) Indictment; and (3) Verdict, judgment, or plea of guilty.”1 La.C.Cr.P. art. 872. Thus, an illegal sentence is, in the contemplation of the law, no sentence at all. See La.C.Cr.P. art. 882 cmt. (a); see also State v. Green, 93–1432, p. 6 (La.App. 4 Cir. 4/17/96), 673 So.2d 262, 266 (citing State v. Johnson, 220 La. 64, 68, 55 So.2d 782, 783–84 (1951) ).
A claim that a sentence is illegal is primarily restricted to those instances in which the term of the prisoner's sentence is not authorized by the statute or statutes which govern the penalty authorized for the crime for which the prisoner has been convicted.2 See State v. Alexander, 14–0401, p. 1 (La.11/7/14), 152 So.3d 137, 137 (per curiam) (citing State v. Parker, 98–0256, p. 1 (La.5/8/98), 711 So.2d 694, 695 (per curiam)) (“[U]nless a pleading captioned as a motion to correct illegal sentence ‘points to a claimed illegal term in the petitioner's sentence,’ it is not cognizable under [Article] 882.”) (punctuation omitted). See also State v. Perkins, 08–0078, p. 14 (La.App. 4 Cir. 6/25/08), 988 So.2d 793, 802.3 Thus, a sentence is illegal when its duration falls outside of the statutorily-provided sentencing limits for the offense of which the prisoner has been convicted. See La.C.Cr.P. art. 881.2 A(1). See, e.g., State v. Williams, 12–1092, p. 2 (La.App. 4 Cir. 4/24/13), 115 So.3d 702, 704 ; State v. Hunter, 02–2742, pp. 2–3 (La.App. 4 Cir. 2/19/03), 841 So.2d 42, 43 ; State v. LeBlanc, 14–0163 (La.1/9/15), 156 So.3d 1168, 1170 (per curiam).
In contrast, an excessive sentence, that is a sentence which falls within the sentencing limits but nonetheless violates the Louisiana Constitution, see La. Const. art. I, § 20 ; State v. Dorthey, 623 So.2d 1276 (La.1993), is not an illegal sentence for the purposes of obtaining relief under Article 882. See Perkins, 08–0078, p. 12, 988 So.2d at 800–01.
Determining whether the sentence that a prisoner is serving is an illegal sentence is a straightforward exercise. The statutorily-provided limits on the sentence are determined by examining the law in effect on the date the commission of the offense of which the prisoner was convicted. See State v. Sugasti, 01–3407, p. 4 (La.6/21/02), 820 So.2d 518, 520 ; State v. Parker, 03–0924, pp. 9–10 (La.4/14/04), 871 So.2d 317, 322 (defendant's status as a habitual offender is determined as of the date that he commits the charged crime).4 Thus the version of the penalty in the violated statute as well as the versions of any statutes that enhance that penalty in effect on the date of the commission of the
prisoner's offense control the determination of the limits on the penalty.
III
For the purposes of considering Mr. Mead's motion under Article 882, we first look to the date of the commission of his offense—October 5, 1997. We then review the version of the statute prohibiting possession of between 28 grams and 200 grams of cocaine in effect on that date. The penalty for possessing that amount of cocaine on that date was a sentence of a term of imprisonment “at hard labor of not less than ten years, nor more than sixty years, and ... a fine of not less than fifty thousand dollars, nor more than one hundred fifty thousand dollars.” La R.S. 40:967 F(1)(a) (West 1997).5
We next consider the version of the Habitual Offender Law in effect on October 5, 1997. The multiple bill charging Mr. Mead as a recidivist alleged two predicate felony offenses, both for simple possession of cocaine. On October 5, 1997, the pertinent penalty provision of the Habitual Offender Law, in relevant part, read as follows: “If the third felony or either of the two prior felonies is a felony defined ... as a violation of the Uniform Controlled Dangerous Substances Law punishable by imprisonment for more than five years ..., the person shall be imprisoned for the remainder of his natural life, without benefit of parole, probation, or suspension of sentence.” La. R.S. 15:529.1 A(1)(b)(ii) (West 1997) (emphasis added).6
With regard to the two predicate offenses alleged in the multiple bill, the first conviction was for an offense committed on February 6, 1992 and the second for an offense committed on April 7, 1993. At the time of the commission of these predicate offenses, the penalty was a term of imprisonment “with or without hard labor for not more than five years and, in addition, ... a fine of not more than five thousand dollars.” La. R.S. 40:967 C(3). Thus, there is no doubt that the two predicate offenses are felony offenses, and not misdemeanors, as each permitted the imposition of a sentence at hard labor as a result of a conviction. See La. R.S. 14:2 A(4) (A “felony” is “any crime for which an offender may be sentenced to death or imprisonment at hard labor”) (emphasis added); La. R.S. 14:2 A(6) (A “misdemeanor” is “any crime other than a felony”).7
Thus, clearly, the Habitual Offender Law, at the time of the commission of his offense, provided for only one permissible sentence—life imprisonment without the benefit of parole, probation, or suspension of sentence—the exact sentence given to Mr. Mead.8 Therefore, because the sentence imposed upon Mr. Mead was authorized by the applicable statutes, his sentence does not contain an illegal term. The life-without-parole sentence is a legal
sentence, and the trial judge correctly denied his motion.
IV
Even though we have concluded as a matter of law that the trial judge's ruling denying Mr. Mead's motion is correct, we nevertheless in this Part address the specific claim of illegality as...
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