Even shorter than the case "briefs" I've been posting, these summaries - lifted straight from appeals documents - allow me to cover even more cases. Each summary will include a link to the relevant brief or document for anyone interested in reading more. My insertions are in italics.
Case: State v Rebecca L. Pineda
Case no.: 23AP1883
Circuit Judge: Milton Childs Sr., Milwaukee County
Filed in: District I, state Court of Appeals
Filing Attorney: Assistant Attorney General John Blimling
Argument: The circuit court erred when it granted Pineda’s motion to vacate her convictions and allowed her to withdraw her pleas.
Introduction
In 2019, Defendant-Respondent Rebecca L. Pineda pled no contest to charges of theft and identity theft related to her embezzlement of over $10,000 from her employer, The Packing House restaurant. At sentencing, through counsel, she apologized to the owners of The Packing House, saying that she was sorry, wanted to make things right, and wanted to move on with her life. Approximately 18 months later, however, Pineda moved to vacate her convictions and withdraw her pleas. First, she argued that her plea counsel was ineffective for failing to retain a forensic accountant to review and possibly challenge the evidence against her. Second, she argued that the State violated her constitutional and statutory rights by failing to turn over supposedly exculpatory evidence of a connection between one of the owners of The Packing House, C.W., and Detective Dale Bormann, a trustee serving on the board of the Milwaukee Police Association (“MPA”) who investigated Pineda’s crimes. Pineda claimed that links between C.W. and the MPA, including a donation made to C.W.’s political campaign by the MPA and an award granted to The Packing House by the MPA, could have been used to impeach Detective Bormann at trial. The circuit court rejected Pineda’s ineffective assistance of counsel claim, but it granted her motion with respect to the undisclosed connection between C.W. and the MPA, concluding that the State should have turned over evidence of the connection.
The circuit court’s decision was wrong. As an initial matter, Pineda’s claim that the State’s failure to turn over certain evidence violated her due process rights is a nonstarter because those rights are trial rights that do not apply when a defendant pleads to committing crimes. Moreover, Pineda failed to establish that the evidence in question was material such that the State’s failure to turn it over constituted either a due process violation or a statutory discovery violation. This Court should reverse.
Commentaires